Study of Australian multi-campus universities

This study investigates whether Australian multi-campus universities are distinctive in terms of their student profile by field of education (FOE), funding and expenditure profiles, and learning and teaching outcomes, and identifies the implications for higher education policy and funding. Both parametric and non-parametric techniques are used to explore links between various measures of profile and performance for 38 Australian universities. The results show that Australian multi-campus universities have different educational and funding profiles to the rest of the sector, including a lower total revenue per student. Differences in cost profiles across universities are more strongly associated with their age than with their campus structure. No statistically significant differences in performance related to learning and teaching are found between multi-campus and other universities. The study concludes that multi-campus universities are achieving similar performance outcomes with fewer resources and that an objective measure of the extent of multi-campus university operations should be recognised and used in government funding allocation formulae.