Completion and dropout rates: what they mean for you

Completion rate tells you how many students who started a bachelor degree had finished a degree four, six or nine years later. They don't have to finish the same course or stay at the same university. If someone changes course or moves university and eventually graduates, they're still counted as having completed a degree.

First-year attrition: of the students who started a bachelor degree, how many didn't come back to study at any university the next year. Moving to another university counts as staying, not leaving. The department calls this the sector attrition rate.

The figures on this page are for domestic students starting a bachelor degree. They don't include international students.

The department follows each year's starters for up to nine years, which leaves room for part-time study, breaks and changing course. It sorts every student into one of four outcomes.

So if you're worried that taking longer than the standard course length means you've failed, it doesn't. Some students take a break, switch courses, move universities or study part-time before they finish.

The numbers also change depending on how long you give students to finish. After four years, 41.5% of students who started in 2021 had finished and 35.5% were still enrolled. After six years, 62.8% of students who started in 2019 had finished.

In first year, 12.2% of students who started in 2023 didn't come back in 2024, down from 14.7% for 2022 starters. The department suggests several reasons: some people who might have started and later left went to work or to Fee-Free TAFE instead; some universities did more to identify disengaged students before the census date and gave extra support to new students at risk of leaving; and the mix of students who started shifted towards those more likely to stay.

The biggest difference is by ATAR. Among school leavers who started in 2016, completion rose steadily with the ATAR they started with.

But don't read these numbers as a prediction of what you'll do. Even among students who started with an ATAR between 30 and 49, more than half (55%) had finished a degree within nine years.

How you study matters too. 75.4% of full-time students finished within nine years, against 48% of part-time students.

These groups overlap, so you shouldn't use any one number to predict your own outcome. For example, older students are more likely to study part-time, which is also associated with lower completion rates.

Completion rates vary between universities. For students who started in 2016, nine-year completion ranged from 52.4% to 92.5% across 41 universities. First-year attrition for students who started in 2023 ranged from 2.9% to 27.4%.

That sounds like a big difference, but the numbers don't tell the whole story. Universities attract different groups of students, and those differences affect completion. For example, part-time, older, online and regional students, and students who started with lower ATARs, have lower completion rates nationally. A university with more students in these groups may therefore have a lower overall rate.

A lower completion rate doesn't automatically mean a university is worse, and a higher rate doesn't guarantee that you'll finish there.

Yes – but use them as one piece of the puzzle, not a reason to rule out a university.

• Look at the university's numbers alongside the national figure and, where possible, universities with a similar mix of students.
• Look at first-year attrition as well as long-term completion. First-year attrition is a more recent measure, while nine-year completion tells you about students who started many years ago.
• Think about your own circumstances. If you expect to study part-time, online or while working significant hours, ask the university what support is available to students in that situation.
• Look at other things that matter to you too, such as the course itself, teaching, student support and what graduates go on to do.

• They're for the whole university, not the particular course you're considering.
• They don't tell you why someone stopped studying. They may have left for a job, transferred to TAFE, changed direction or decided university wasn't right for them.
• They describe what happened to students in the past. They can't tell you whether you'll finish.