CAPA’s Response to the Transparent Higher Education Admissions Consultation Paper

Download: CAPA’s response to the Transparent Higher Education Admissions Consultation Paper

CAPA welcomes the targeting admission information to include the two-applicant groupings that may become prospective postgraduate students. With more comparable information between courses and institutions, students can make an informed decision on their enrolment, especially with the ever-increasing investment cost of postgraduate education.

The available CSP places should be displayed as something other than an exact numerical value, as a small number may give a false perception of a highly competitive CSP process. Thus, we recommend providing the percentage of successful applicants receiving a CSP place, which serves as an indicator (based on historical data) of the ‘relative competitiveness for CSP places’, which considers the cohort size.

Other information we feel would be beneficial to prospective postgraduate students include:

• Estimated hours or ratio split between on-campus and online interaction.
• Whether a postgraduate coursework course is an eligible prerequisite for a Doctor of Philosophy
• The potential existing pathways, including horizontal transfers between degrees (i.e. Biotechnology to Molecular Biology)
• More consistency in course naming conventions between institutions to ensure students are aware of analogous pathways at different institutions.