Welcome and what to expect in this session

G'day, and welcome to the Choosing Your Uni National Virtual Expo. My name is Rob Malicki, and welcome to this session on Adelaide University. I'm on Gadigal land in Sydney. I'd like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of this incredible land on which I live and work.

Before I get started, I just want to say hi. If you are joining me live as part of this live stream, you can drop your questions and comments into the chat, whether that's here in the session hub or whether you're streaming via YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, whatever. Drop them in. I will try to get to them by the end of this session. And if you're watching on the replay, you can join the Choosing Your Uni Discord. All of the questions and all the interaction throughout this expo is happening in Discord. Free to join, details in the session description below. And of course, if you're a parent and Discord isn't for everybody, we've got a Facebook community just for you, so you can jump in there and ask any of your questions as well.

In the next 20 minutes, we're going to be talking about what Adelaide Uni is known for and what it's all about. We're going to hear a little bit from students about what they say about studying there. We're going to find out about its academic strengths, and we're going to get into some of the hot student data. Now, it's an interesting one because Adelaide Uni is brand new, so I'm going to be mixing a little bit of data from the old institutions, the University of South Australia and the University of Adelaide, and talking about what that means for your potential experience at Adelaide University.

What Adelaide University is, and who it's for

Adelaide University is Australia's newest university. It launched in January this year, and it was formed by the merger of two very well-established and reputable institutions: the University of Adelaide and the University of South Australia, which were merged into a single university with roughly 70,000 students. That makes it one of the largest universities in all of Australia, and it also came in on the international rankings at number 82 in the world in its first year of operation, which is pretty remarkable.

So who is it for, and who is it not for? Well, it probably isn't for you if you're looking for a university that has a track record as a single institution. Adelaide Uni has only just launched, which means some things are just being ironed out. We're talking about systems, culture, administration, and how some of those campuses actually work together. So if that uncertainty makes you uncomfortable, it's worth knowing upfront, because one thing that is guaranteed in the next couple of years is that there are changes coming to the way things operate at Adelaide University. There are going to be some subject areas that move around between campuses. You're going to have changes in administration and teaching styles and all sorts of things like that. So if that kind of fluidity really bothers you, then maybe you want to check out a different institution. It's also probably not for you if you're really looking for a small, intimate university where the academics know your name, because at 70,000 students, it's big. It's really big.

But here's the thing. If you're the kind of person who finds it exciting to be part of something new, a university that's still defining its identity but with the reputation and research output of two extraordinarily well-established institutions behind it, then keep watching. Because this institution really could line up with your interests and your goals.

What students say about studying at the predecessor universities

Before I go any further, let's hear from some students who used to study at the old institutions, the University of Adelaide and the University of South Australia, because of course these are the core histories that have made up this new institution.

"I personally enjoy it. There's lots of variety in subjects you can choose, stuff like that. So I like it here."

"I would say it's very theory-based as opposed to practical, hands-on learning, which can be a bit frustrating at times."

"I like the campus, how it's spread out in a way, but also quite close together. It's easy to get around. It's in the city, so it's close to the mall. People are pretty friendly."

"I guess it's a lot of independent learning. It's not like the tutors will give you that much help in terms of doing your work on time, doing all your readings and stuff like that. So that's something I didn't expect to be as full-on for some of my subjects."

Research strengths and the Group of Eight heritage

Here's what I think about Adelaide University, and I'm going to give you three main points. The first is around research. This is an institution that has global research weight from day one. It's not a start-up university trying to figure out how to teach students and deliver research. It's built from two extraordinary universities that are already doing serious work across a vast range of disciplines.

The Australian Institute for Machine Learning, or AIML, is one of the leading AI research centres in the country. They've got dedicated research campuses for agriculture and wine at Waite and Roseworthy. And the new institution has organised itself around five distinct research themes: defence and national security, health, food and agricultural sustainability, and creative and cultural strategy. That's not a vague wish list. What the institution is doing is sending a signal about where the money and the attention are going to go. So if you're interested in any of those areas, this is a university that's really structuring itself around them.

Now, the University of Adelaide was a member of the Group of Eight, Australia's leading research-intensive universities, sometimes called the sandstones and typically considered the most prestigious in Australia. Adelaide University as the new entity is going to be part of the Group of Eight. But what's super interesting is that it's also bringing in the industry-focused, dynamic, innovative approach of the University of South Australia. I was a massive fan of UniSA. It was dynamic, innovative, taught a really interesting range of disciplines, was always looking to do things a little bit new and different, and I loved the senior leadership that drove that vision.

What you bring together are two very different institutions: the University of Adelaide, a classic research-intensive, more theoretically focused institution, and the University of South Australia, dynamic, innovative, and teaching-focused. Bringing those together has now created a super university. It's going to take some time to settle, but I think in future this is going to be an institution that competes on a global scale.

Adelaide as a city and the cost-of-living advantage

Another thing that I absolutely love about this institution is Adelaide itself. It's one of the most affordable cities in Australia, and as a mainland capital city it's genuinely cheaper than Sydney and Melbourne. The key campus for Adelaide Uni is right in the heart of the city. We're talking about North Terrace and City West. It's genuinely part of that ecosystem of the city centre, and it's beautiful. So if you're thinking of moving from interstate, your money literally goes further in Adelaide than it does in other places.

Breadth of degrees and stackable qualifications

Talking about that merger, another thing that really stands out is just the sheer breadth of this institution. Over 400 degrees are now available across six colleges, and that's a huge range: business, law, health, engineering, creative arts, education, science, the lot. And what they've done is design their degrees with formal exit points, which means you can complete a certain stage of your degree, and if you don't finish the whole thing, you can still get a recognised qualification for what you've done. That's not standard across the sector, and it's genuinely student-friendly.

I believe the future, with the way technology is impacting things, is about stackable qualifications. You do this qualification, the workforce changes, you need to add something on top. Adelaide University is positioning itself for that stackable qualification future, and I think that future-readiness is going to be a real advantage for this university going downstream.

Academic colleges and areas of strength

So let's get into the academic detail. Six colleges, which I've mentioned. The College of Engineering draws its strengths from both preceding universities, with significant depth in areas like computer science and AI, civil engineering, and mining engineering. South Australia has a very large defence industries footprint, and Adelaide Uni has made defence and national security one of its five signature research themes.

The College of Health at Adelaide Uni brings together programmes across medicine, nursing, allied health, and public health. Medicine at Adelaide has a long history. The University of Adelaide was one of the first in Australia to admit women to medical degrees, back in 1880. The merged institution inherits strong clinical training networks across South Australian hospitals and health services. So if health is your area, there are lots of opportunities here.

Looking at some of the other campuses that are part of Adelaide University, the Waite campus and Roseworthy are both genuinely distinctive. Waite is one of the largest agricultural research precincts in the Southern Hemisphere, and Roseworthy has specialist facilities for veterinary science and animal production. These aren't token regional outposts. These are purpose-built research and teaching environments. And if you want to study wine science, this is possibly the best place in the country to do it, with Charles Sturt University at Wagga perhaps being the other one I'd absolutely throw into the mix.

I briefly mentioned the Australian Institute for Machine Learning, which deserves its own mention as one of Australia's leading research groups. It sits within the College of Engineering and IT, so for students interested in machine learning, computer vision, or data science, having access to that calibre of research is an enormous advantage.

The College of Arts, Creative Arts, Design and Humanities is interesting too. Creative and cultural strategy is one of the research themes, and that's unusual because most universities don't elevate creative disciplines to that level of strategic priority. Partly that comes from the University of South Australia's research strength in design and visual arts, and partly it reflects Adelaide's identity as a cultural capital of Australia.

What to expect during the transition period

A word of context here. Adelaide University launched this year, and when two massive universities merge, the full integration of systems, staff, culture, and student services takes time. The early cohorts of students are part of that transition, and that could be you. For some students, that's a feature: you get to help shape things, and your feedback will literally be taken into account in how this university operates going forward. For others, things might feel a bit rough around the edges. I just want you to go in with your eyes wide open. If you do go there and you see something that doesn't seem right, speak up. You're talking about huge organisations creating a single vision going forward, and that really needs your attention before you go in.

Student satisfaction, graduate employment, and salary data

Let's take a moment to look at what the numbers actually say about Adelaide University. A little caveat about rankings: the national rankings come from the Quality Indicators for Learning and Teaching, or QILT. This is Australian government data where they've surveyed hundreds of thousands of students and employers from all over the place. It's actual real data that you can trust about what students have said about their experience and what employers think about those graduates. The QS and Times Higher Education rankings are global rankings, and I'll say a little bit more about those in a moment.

Student satisfaction at Adelaide University sits at 77.8%. That's solid. It's above the national average and it's ahead of several Group of Eight universities. For context, the University of Melbourne, Australia's number one institution on global rankings, sits at 73.8%, and UNSW is actually lower at 71.7%. So Adelaide is doing better than some of the biggest names on this measure. I personally think we might see a little dip in that overall student satisfaction in the next survey or two because of that bumpiness I mentioned, so just bear that in mind.

When it comes to graduate employment, results from both the University of Adelaide and the University of South Australia show that around 78% of students are in full-time work four months after finishing. That's middle of the pack. It's not as high as the regional universities like Charles Sturt, which sits at around 91%, but it is comparable to institutions like UTS, whereas the University of Melbourne at 67.7% is significantly lower. And this is really important because you see it all over the marketing brochures. Employment rates are heavily influenced by what people are studying and where they're studying. If you're doing a practical degree like nursing or education or engineering in a regional area with strong demand for jobs, high employment rates are no surprise. But if you're studying at a large metropolitan university and your cohort includes disciplines like the creative arts, where graduate employment takes longer and starting salaries are lower, of course that number comes down. So always take this stuff with a grain of salt.

What you can do to get into the details is use the Compare Ed website from the Australian government. You can look at each degree area at every single university. And if you want to make that even easier, the Choosing Your Uni platform allows you to do that simply by chatting with our AI agent Lemon, which works a bit like ChatGPT except that it's based on your interests, preferences, and goals. The platform is free to sign up for, it takes about 30 seconds, and you get personalised, independent guidance based on your preferences, not based on who has the most marketing money to spend.

When it comes to median graduate salary, for Adelaide Uni the median graduate earns just about $70,000, which is respectable. It's not at the top of the table and it's not at the bottom. Universities with mining regions or heavy nursing and health cohorts tend to report much higher numbers. The University of Southern Queensland, for example, comes in at $80,000. The Adelaide Uni figure reflects both the disciplines on offer and the fact that the South Australian job market, while it's not weak, doesn't necessarily pay as high as Sydney or Melbourne.

Global rankings in context

Let's look at the global rankings. For some people, a big global number is important, and I'm quite convinced that Adelaide Uni will over the next decade become one of those big global brands like the University of Sydney, the University of Melbourne, and Monash. In its very first year, the consolidated entity came in at 82nd in the world on the QS rankings, which makes it eighth in Australia. The Times Higher Education Global ranking puts it at 133rd globally and seventh nationally. These are incredibly strong positions for a university that only launched this year.

But remember, global rankings don't tell you what it's like to be in your tutorial class on a Tuesday morning. What they focus on is research output: how much research is getting done, how much that research is being cited by other researchers around the world, how many international students there are, and what the international reputation of the institution is. It's not purely about the student experience. That's why I personally prefer the QILT data to the global rankings. And if you do want to look at global rankings, I strongly advise you look at the subject-specific rankings for the institutions and choose the ones that are relevant to you. If a university is weak in engineering but exceptional in creative arts and that's what you want to do, well, there's your answer.

Comparing Adelaide University with similar institutions

Let's talk about comparison institutions and who I would compare Adelaide Uni against if I was looking to study there. The first is obvious: it's in Adelaide, so we're also looking at Flinders University. Flinders is smaller than Adelaide Uni, it's a single institution, and it has particular strengths in health, medicine, and engineering. So if you're thinking of studying in Adelaide, you really need to be comparing both. Interestingly, Flinders has a slightly higher student satisfaction at just about 79% and a very different campus feel. Most of the activity is out at the main Bedford Park campus rather than in the city centre, though it does have a presence in the city. I've got great videos on both of those spaces on my YouTube channel, youtube.com/ChoosingYourUni, and you should also check out the Flinders session as part of this National Virtual Expo.

If what draws you to Adelaide University is research reputation and the breadth of degrees, UQ in Brisbane, the University of Queensland, is to me one of the nearest matches. It's ranked 42nd in the world on the QS global rankings and offers a similarly comprehensive range of degrees. UQ has decades of stability as a single institution, and Brisbane is a bigger city, which makes a real difference. Adelaide is more affordable; Brisbane probably has more opportunity in total, and that trade-off matters. UQ also has some extraordinary strengths in agricultural sciences at its Gatton campus, and a number of research areas that overlap with Adelaide University. Worth a look.

Another one that might seem a little unexpected is the University of Newcastle. Newcastle is a research-intensive university in a mid-sized city a couple of hours north of Sydney, with deep ties to regional industry. It has a genuine commitment to access and equity, and it's ranked in the 250 to 300 band in the Times Higher Education rankings, but it has a similar level of student satisfaction and strong graduate employment. If what appeals to you about Adelaide Uni is particularly areas like health, medicine, and engineering, but you want a city that's even more affordable, Newcastle is really affordable. It's got beautiful surf beaches, and it's possibly worth thinking about.

Over in Western Australia, UWA, the University of Western Australia, is probably the obvious comparison. It's a member of the Group of Eight, has a comprehensive listing of subjects, similar global rankings in many ways, and some similar areas of academic strength. Perth is a very different type of city to Adelaide, though also good on cost of living and lifestyle.

Finally, in the major east coast cities, in Sydney I'd look at Macquarie, which has a single main campus footprint, different from Adelaide Uni's multi-campus structure, but some very similar areas of research strength. And in Melbourne, outside of Melbourne and Monash as the two really prestigious Group of Eight members, RMIT is very interesting in the technology space and very connected to industry. Worth thinking about too.

Listener questions: degrees, and moving interstate for uni

I've got a couple of minutes left, and I'd like to get to a couple of questions that were submitted in advance. Thank you to those people who did that. And if I don't get to your question in the chat right now, it will be up in the Choosing Your Uni Discord, so check that out, and in the Facebook community for parents.

Here's a really good question from a prospective student in Adelaide: "Adelaide Uni is now the new merged uni. Does that mean my degree will say Adelaide University, or will it still reference the old University of Adelaide?" If you're enrolled at Adelaide University, your degree will be awarded by Adelaide University. That's the new institution. It's fully accredited, employers will recognise it, and that's what's going to be on your degree. But in some ways, it's even got an advantage: it carries the legacy and history of both the University of Adelaide and the University of South Australia. I think that's kind of special.

The second question is from a parent: "Is it worth my son moving interstate for uni, or should he just stay local?" I think moving interstate can be genuinely life-changing. It's going to force more independence, broaden his network, help him grow up faster, and help him understand different things about the world. Of course, it's not for everybody. The financial cost is real. If you move out of home or move interstate, you've got accommodation and living expenses on top of everything else, and those can't just be absorbed into the household. So depending on what you're looking to study, it may be a great choice if there's something specific you want to study at an interstate university, but it may also be redundant if the course you want is available just down the road.

What I would say is that if you want the whole university experience, to live on campus, to experience clubs and societies, to be part of that whole environment, and you can afford it, I'm personally a big advocate of moving interstate. Take Tasmania as an example: an amazing place to live if you love the outdoors, extraordinary if you don't like the heat, as well as having all the offerings of a small capital city. But it's about knowing yourself and what kind of experience you're looking for. And once again, you can chat with the Choosing Your Uni AI to narrow down choices that really do align with you, not based on who's spending the most marketing money.

That's all I've got time for. I'm going to get back to those questions in the Choosing Your Uni Discord. Thank you so much for joining me, and I'll see you at another session as part of this National Virtual Expo. Have yourself an awesome day.