About 1-in-3 students enrolled in onshore Australian MBA courses is an international student, according to a major study of enrolment statistics.
The report, compiled by Dennis Murray and Stephen Connelly of GlobalEd Services, showed 16,301 students were enrolled in Australian MBA courses, on and offshore in 2013, of which 6,949 (42.6%) were international students. Nearly 57% of the international MBA students were enrolled onshore, the rest in offshore courses. Nearly 30% of onshore MBA students were international.
A total of 39 Australian universities reported enrolments of international students in MBA courses in 2013.
Six universities had international MBA student numbers exceeding 50% of total MBA enrolments.
Federation University reported 77.9% of its MBA students being international, followed by the University of Southern Queensland (75.9%), Charles Darwin University (71.3%), James Cook University (71.1), Flinders University (66.7%) and Central Queensland University (53.4%).
The majority of universities however enrolled proportions of international students well under the average. Enrolment numbers as well as enrolment proportions were tiny in some cases.
The study did not detail the home country of students enrolled in MBA courses but it is likely to reflect overall enrolments. Statistics from the Australian Government’s Department of Education and Training showed China accounted for 25.9% of the total 589,860 enrolments in Australia in 2014, followed by India with a further 10.7%. Vietnam, Republic of Kore and Thailand rounded out the top five.
International student enrolments in Australia werere concentrated within a small number of fields of education. For each of the top ten nationalities, ‘Management and Commerce’ was the most popular field in both higher education and VET in 2014. In higher education and VET combined, ‘Management and Commerce’ accounted for 56.3% of enrolments while the combined fields representing Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) accounted for% of enrolments in the top ten nationalities.
The GlobalEd Services report identified a high level of variability for international enrolments in Group of 8 (Go8) largest and most prestigious universities in Australia.
Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra was the standout university with enrolments of international students more than twice the average for the Go8, and the only Go8 University with proportions of international students above the national average. The University of Melbourne and the University of New South Wales were the only other Go8 universities enrolling proportions of international students into their MBA courses at or above the average for the group. Monash, Adelaide, Queensland, Sydney and Western Australia enrolled very low proportions of international MBA students.
