Institutional Differentiation in Australian Postsecondary Education: Hit and Miss

Abstract

Today’s postsecondary education system in Australia is a complex tapestry of different types of institutions with different histories, governance structures, funding arrangements, serving quite different types of students and focusing on quite different sets of activities. This makes for a murky picture with no clear boundaries for specific types of institutions. The first part of this essay provides a brief overview of the system as of 2016 followed by the history of this system that has resulted from both planned and ideology-driven change.