People, skills and education

Australia boasts one of the world's most competitive and renowned tertiary education systems, with international students increasingly attracted to the country's high quality institutions. Australia's enviable quality of life, pleasant climate, secure environment and comparatively low educational costs contribute to its competitiveness and desirability as a regional centre for education.

The OECD's Education at a Glance 2011 reports that Australia is home to the highest proportion of international students in tertiary enrolments in the OECD. Furthermore, the IMD recently ranked Australia first in the world for inbound student mobility, measured as the number of foreign tertiary-level students per 1,000 inhabitants, in the World Competitiveness Yearbook 2011.

Sydney was recently ranked in the top ten cities in the world for attracting talent by A.T. Kearney's 2012 Global Cities Index, based on the quality of universities, the number of international students and the number of residents with university degrees. In 2011, around 412,000 international students were studying at Australian tertiary education institutions (including universities and vocational education and training institutes), with over 152,000, or 37% of them, enrolled in New South Wales. The countries providing the largest numbers of overseas tertiary education students to New South Wales include China, India, Nepal, Thailand and Korea.

Tertiary Education - International Students by State, 2011¹