Some universities are seeing an increase in the number of course offerings despite projections of lacklustre domestic student enrolment figures.
Victoria University (VU) said its offers for domestic higher education in December and January climbed by 4% from a year ago after VTAC released another round of offers last week.
VU’s December round took in some 80 students who had the opportunity to start their studies earlier through the University’s Block Model as part of their Early Start initiative. This initiative allows students to take in manageable units by advancing their studies during the summer break.
Professor Marcia Devlin, VU acting vice-chancellor, said the Block Model makes it easier for new university students to transition to tertiary education. This likewise improves their chances of study success.
“The model is designed to be active, collaborative and engaged. The block provides opportunities for our students to undertake their studies during what are traditionally semester breaks,” Professor Devlin said.
“They can also commence study at multiple times throughout the years. This gives students maximum control over how they choose to complete their course”.
Meanwhile, the University of Sunshine Coast (USC) has posted a record number of offers issued for Semester 1 in the wake of the University’s major expansion.
USC, which posted a 3.1% year-on-year increase, said it has issued a total of 4,775 offers as of last week. Bulk or 2,090 of these offers were from Sunshine Coast and Noosa Shire, followed by 1,389 offers for places in Moreton Bay region.
Some 247 of these offers went to Fraser Coast while 146 went to Gympie residents.
USC credited the increase in offers to the construction of its new Moreton Bay campus which has about 1,000 offers. The new campus, located in Petrie, is slated to hold classes in February.
Science courses continue to trend
USC’s most sought-after degrees were health science-related, specifically nursing science, biomedical science, paramedic science. Another science course, animal ecology, was also a popular degree for USC applicants.
James Cook University (JCU) as of last week also issued a total of 2,483 offers to prospective students, which is less than half of the 4,731 students who had placed the University as its first preference.
The University, however, said it will still be issuing additional offers until its orientation week next month.
Similar to USC and other universities that saw a number of offers for science courses, JCU acting vice-chancellor Professor Chris Cocklin said a considerable number of offers also came from STEM-related courses.
“Our biggest group of offers in Cairns is 98 places in Nursing Science, and in Townsville it’s 208 places in Medicine,” he said.
“We’re also seeing promising and steady growth in courses including Marine Science in Townsville and engineering in Cairns”.
The University also noted that the demand itself came from students, with 2,286 applicants placing medicine as their first preference. This is followed by nursing, which was marked as a first preference for 405 applicants.
Dentistry was also found to be popular with 386 first preference applications. Some 268 applicants also placed veterinary science as their first preference.
Last week, the University of Southern Queensland issued offers to 420 undergraduate students, leading to over 2,000 offers to date, USQ vice-chancellor Geraldine Mackenzie said. The offers were placements for the University’s Toowoomba, Springfield and Ipswich campuses. Some offers were also made for USQ online.
While a number of universities reported to have an influx of applicants placing STEM-related courses as a first preference, USQ Ipswich – the University’s health precinct – still has over 100 degrees still available.