The Higher Education Group of DEST, with the cooperation of the Australian Bureau of Statistics 
, is responsible for the collection and dissemination of statistics relating to the provision of higher education in all Australian universities. Funding is provided by the Australian Government. The Australian Bureau of Statistics publishes data from the collections in Year Book Australia, various State year books and in research and experimental development.
The Division manages a comprehensive set of statistics collections referred to as the Higher Education Statistics Collection.
Data included in the Higher Education Statistics Collection relate to:
- courses conducted by higher education institutions;
- numbers and characteristics of students undertaking courses;
- student load;
- completion of units of study and courses;
- students' liabilities under the Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS);
- numbers and characteristics of staff in higher education institutions;
- income and expenditure for higher education institutions;
- research activity; and
- the educational profiles of higher education institutions.
The Division, through its Statistics Unit, disseminates data from the collections through statistics publications, datasets, tabulations, extracts and analyses prepared for clients.
In addition, many reports and monographs produced by the Division and other agencies contain data from the collection. The data are widely used by the Department, other Commonwealth and State/Territory agencies, higher education institutions, researchers, journalists, unions, and individuals in the community as a whole.
See Publications - Higher Education Statistics Collections for full details on the various series.
See Obtaining data from the Higher Education Statistics Collections for details on available datasets.
This is the inaugural publication of the series – ‘
Undergraduate Applications, Offers and Acceptances’. It contains statistics relating to the number of applicants for undergraduate study at university, the number of offers received and the number of offers accepted.