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The Australian Centre for Student Equity and Success acknowledges Indigenous peoples across Australia as the Traditional Owners of the lands on which the nation’s campuses are situated. With a history spanning more than 60,000 years as the original educators, Indigenous peoples hold a unique place in our nation. We recognise the importance of their knowledge and culture, and reflect the principles of participation, equity, and cultural respect in our work. We pay our respects to Elders past, present, and future, and consider it an honour to learn from our Indigenous colleagues, partners, and friends.

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You are reading: Estimating the causal effects of the demand-driven system reform in higher education equity

Trial overview

Registered
Users Priority Students: Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islanders, Low socio-economic status backgrounds, Students with disabilities, Regional, remote, or rural locations, Non-English speaking backgrounds
Academic Cap Stage of Intervention: During Higher Education
Chart Line Outcomes: Access, Engagement, Progression, Positive Transitions

What was trialed

The intervention is the introduction of the demand-driven system (DDS) in Australian higher education between 2009 and 2012, which removed caps on Commonwealth-supported undergraduate places, allowing universities to expand enrolments in response to student demand. The DDS aimed to increase access for traditionally underrepresented groups, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students and students from low socio-economic status (SES) and regional or remote backgrounds.

The expected outcomes focus on both participation and equity-related success. First, the DDS is hypothesised to increase undergraduate enrolment among equity groups beyond what would have occurred without the reform. Second, it is anticipated that students from these groups will achieve comparable or improved completion rates relative to pre-DDS cohorts. Third, graduates benefiting from the DDS are expected to attain positive early labour market outcomes, such as employment and earnings, demonstrating the longer-term value of increased access.

Using nationally linked administrative data (PLIDA) and a synthetic difference-in-differences framework, the project seeks to generate causal evidence on whether the DDS not only expanded access but also delivered meaningful improvements in academic and labour market outcomes for Australia’s most vulnerable student populations.

What was found

Results pending.

How the trial was delivered

The quasi-experimental design (QED) employed in this study is a synthetic difference-in-differences (SDiD) approach, which combines elements of traditional difference-in-differences with synthetic control methods to construct a credible counterfactual. This method allows for the estimation of causal effects of the DDS by comparing observed outcomes of treated equity students to those they would likely have experienced without the reform.

The study utilises the PLIDA dataset, covering all Australian students since 2005. Participants include undergraduate students from equity groups, specifically low SES, who enrolled under DDS, alongside a control group of non-equity students prior to and during the reform.

The analysis focuses on key outcomes: access (enrolment), progression and completion, and early labour market outcomes (employment and earnings). The SDiD approach constructs a synthetic control by weighting non-equity student outcomes to match pre-reform characteristics of equity students, isolating the DDS effect from confounding factors such as institutional type, field of study, and broader socio-economic trends.

This approach provides robust, nationally representative causal evidence on the impact of the DDS across Australia, offering insights into heterogeneous effects across institutions, disciplines, and equity subgroups.