Tertiary Graduates

On a per-capita basis, Australia has more tertiary graduates than many of the world’s leading developed nations – the United Kingdom, France, Switzerland, Japan, the United States and Hong Kong SAR.

The wide variety of opportunities available in Australia’s services sectors, in particular in the professional, technical and financial services industries, are reflected in the fact that almost 42% of Australian students graduated with social science, business and law degrees in 2006.

According to the OECD, the scientific literacy of a country's students is an important determinant of the part that country will play in tomorrow's advanced technology industries. Australia boasts one of the highest proportions of students who graduate with a science (including computer science) degree – around 13%.


Graduates by broad field of education (% of total graduates), 2006

Country Education (1) Human-ities and arts (2) Social science, bus. and law (3) Science (4) Engineer-ing, manufact-uring and con-struction Health and welfare (5) Services Other (6) Total graduates Total graduates per mill. pop'n
New Zealand 11.9 16.0 37.6 11.4 5.2 13.1 3.4 1.4 59,320 14,191
Australia 9.5 10.9 41.8 12.7 7.9 13.2 2.9 1.0 284,910 13,764
Korea 7.9 18.6 19.9 7.3 28.1 11.0 5.8 1.4 605,160 12,498
United Kingdom 11.0 15.4 30.5 13.4 8.2 18.3 0.8 2.3 640,246 10,565
France 2.1 12.1 41.6 11.1 14.7 13.0 3.9 1.5 643,604 10,491
United States 11.5 13.2 38.1 8.9 7.2 13.5 6.5 1.1 2,639,006 8,814
Switzerland (8) 8.7 6.6 40.2 9.4 13.6 9.8 8.4 3.3 63,372 8,518
Japan 7.1 15.2 27.0 3.0 18.2 12.8 9.7 7.1 1,067,939 8,359
Hong Kong SAR (7) 11.1 9.9 31.5 14.7 20.6 5.3 1.5 5.5 39,285 5,669
Germany 7.5 10.5 24.2 10.9 16.3 24.1 3.9 2.7 343,874 4,170
United Arab Emirates (7) 11.9 13.4 35.4 23.4 9.4 5.1 1.2 0.1 13,222 3,225



Footnotes:

1: Includes teacher training, education science, and educational assessment.
2: Includes religion and theology, foreign languages and cultures, native languages, other humanities such as interpretation and translation, linguistics, comparative literature, history, archaeology, philosophy, ethics. Fine arts, performing arts, graphic and audio-visual arts, design, and craft skills.
3: Includes social and behavioural science, journalism and information, business and administration, and law.
4: Includes life sciences, physical sciences, mathematics and statistics, and computer sciences.
5: Includes medicine, medical services, nursing, dental services, social care, and social work.
6: Includes agriculture and unspecified programs.
7: Data are 2007 estimates.
8: Data are for 2005.

Sources: UNESCO Institute for Statistics, www.uis.unesco.org; World Bank Group, World Development Indicators (population figures corresponding to year of latest available students data).