Introduction and who this session is for

G'day, I'm Rob Malicki and welcome to the Choosing Your Uni National Virtual Expo and to this session on the University of Newcastle. Firstly, a declaration of where I am right now: I'm on Garigal land in Sydney. I'm so proud to live and work on Garigal land. I'm so grateful to the traditional owners who've taken such good care of this place over thousands and thousands of years.

Now, before we get started, I wanted to flag what's coming up in the next 20 minutes. Hello to those of you who are joining me live on the live stream. If you've got questions or comments, drop them in the chat -- whether you're on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, you name it. Drop your questions in the chat and I will try to get to them by the end of this session. If I don't manage to get to your individual question during this session, we will add all of those to the Choosing Your Uni Discord. It's a place where you can go to get free and independent advice about your choice of different fields of study and unis, and we'll make sure that all of those questions are answered there. If you are watching this on a replay, thank you also for joining -- those communities are available for you. The Choosing Your Uni Discord details are in the session notes below, and if you're a parent, we've got a special Facebook community just for you.

In the next 20 minutes, some of the topics we're going to be covering include what the University of Newcastle is known for, what kind of students would be well suited to studying there, and we're going to be hearing directly from students who have had that experience. We're going to be finding out about the university's academic strengths and about how it ranks. And we're going to get behind the details with rankings, because when we talk about data on things like student satisfaction, graduate employment, and global rankings, it can be a little confusing. There's a fair bit of marketing talk when it comes to talking about universities -- I'm going to be straight about it with you. We're going to break down all those numbers to help figure out if this university might be the right one for you. And at the end, I'm going to give you some institutions that I would personally think about comparing the University of Newcastle against, should I be making that choice. There are a couple of obvious ones, and there's at least one that I think you'll find quite surprising.

Who Newcastle is (and isn't) right for

Here's a number that might surprise you. The University of Newcastle has a graduate employment rate of nearly 85%. That puts it ahead of every single member of the Group of Eight universities in Australia -- ahead of the University of Sydney, the University of Melbourne, the University of New South Wales, ahead of all of them. The Group of Eight is Australia's coalition of the most prestigious research-intensive universities. Newcastle isn't in that club, but on the metric that really matters -- whether or not you'll actually get a job at the end of your degree -- Newcastle comes out on top.

Now let me save you some time, because I'm going to get into why and how it manages to beat those institutions. But this uni isn't for everyone, so let me tell you who it's probably not for.

Newcastle probably isn't for you if you're looking for that big city campus experience. The main campus of the University of Newcastle is in Newcastle, but it's in the suburbs. It's a beautiful 140 hectares of bushland -- honestly, one of the most beautiful bushland campuses in all of Australia. But bushland isn't inner city. If you're looking for that buzzing, 24/7 inner-city experience at uni, the University of Newcastle is not going to deliver that for you. Also, this isn't an institution for you if you really care about brand name and prestige, and you don't care much about what happens after you graduate. Newcastle doesn't have the same name recognition as the sandstone Group of Eight universities. It earns its reputation through outcomes, not through heritage.

But if you want a university that is still research-strong, where you'll get really good hands-on experience, where the cost of living won't crush you, and where the people around you come from genuinely diverse backgrounds -- this institution could be for you. So stick around.

Student perspective on the Callaghan campus

Before I get into more of the details, let's hear from a student who is actually studying at the University of Newcastle and see what they say about their experience.

"It's a bushland campus. That is fairly unique. I look at other campuses at other universities and I see the central campus right in the middle of the city, and you've got everything that happens in the city going on at the same time. That is really enticing to me, because this is the only campus I've ever known as a university student. But when you hear people talk about the negative aspects of having a city campus, those negative aspects are really big, and that's a problem. If I had to choose, I would choose a campus that looks like this, sounds like this, and smells like this."

Always interesting to hear from the perspectives of people who've studied in a place. Remember, it is just one perspective, and of course everybody has a unique experience as they go through university. So depending on what field you're studying and which campus you end up at, your experience might be different to the one we've just heard about -- but it's still good to hear from the voices of people who are actually studying there.

Three things that define the University of Newcastle

Now let me give you three things that really define this university.

Firstly, Newcastle absolutely punches above its weight when it comes to health and medical research. The university was one of the pioneers of problem-based learning in medicine in Australia. What that means is that instead of sitting in lectures and memorising textbook chapters, medical students work through real clinical scenarios from very early on in their degrees. The Hunter Medical Research Institute is a joint venture between the university and the local health district, with over a thousand researchers working across everything from cancer to mental health to respiratory disease. So if you're interested in health, medicine, nursing, or allied health, this is one of the strongest ecosystems in the country outside of a capital city. I don't say that lightly.

Secondly, this university genuinely cares about equity and access -- and I don't mean that in a brochure way. Newcastle has one of the highest proportions of students from low socioeconomic backgrounds, as well as students from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander backgrounds, of any Australian university. It runs dedicated enabling programmes -- essentially pathway courses that let people who didn't get the ATAR they needed, or who have been out of school for some time, to prove that they can handle university-level study and then transition into a degree. The ATAR -- the Australian Tertiary Admissions Rank -- is still the main number that universities use for school leavers, but Newcastle has built real infrastructure for those whose path doesn't follow that standard route. The Wollotuka Institute, which is the First Nations institute on campus, provides cultural, academic, and social support for First Nations students, and it's embedded right through the university's operations.

The third reason I think Newcastle is an absolute standout choice for certain students is that it's deeply connected to its region -- the Hunter. The Hunter region is going through one of the most dramatic economic transitions in all of Australia. It's a region that was basically founded on coal, and it's now shifting from coal to clean energy and advanced manufacturing. The university is right at the centre of that transition through its Newcastle Institute for Energy and Resources, covering everything from energy storage to decarbonisation to water treatment. So if you're doing things like engineering or environmental science, students aren't just studying theory in isolation. They are literally working alongside industry partners on problems facing the community right now, and those outcomes are going to make a real difference in the real world.

Academic strengths across health, engineering, and education

Let's move on to the academic strengths in a little bit of detail. The university is organised into three big colleges: Engineering, Science and Environment; Health, Medicine and Wellbeing; and Human and Social Futures. Across these colleges, there are more than 700 programme options, including single degrees, combined degrees, and postgraduate degrees.

As we've alluded to, medicine and health is the headline act -- and deservedly so. The medical school's problem-based learning model has proven nationally influential, but other health disciplines are also incredibly strong. Nursing and midwifery are particularly strong, and Newcastle consistently performs well above national averages in satisfaction surveys in these areas. Clinical placements are embedded through partnerships with hospitals and health services across the Hunter and the Central Coast.

Another major academic pillar is engineering. Newcastle has a very comprehensive offering -- civil, mechanical, electrical, environmental, and computer engineering -- so it's got all the breadth you would hope for, as well as the research infrastructure to back that up. The Energy Futures Lab has facilities where researchers and students literally test clean energy technology at an industrial scale. This kind of hands-on experience for undergraduates can be quite unusual for Australian universities, and it's really cutting edge -- you're working on real-world problems.

Another standout area is education. Newcastle has been training teachers since 1949, long before the university formally existed. Teacher education students do extensive school placements in regional schools, and the programme has a strong reputation amongst education employers in New South Wales.

Alongside those, there are many other disciplines -- business, law, architecture, and creative industries -- and these are all pretty solid, particularly through the Newcastle City campus called New Space, where students are studying right in the heart of Newcastle, just a couple of kilometres from some of the most beautiful beaches on the New South Wales coastline.

Understanding Newcastle's multiple campuses

I want to flag that Newcastle has campuses in multiple locations. We've talked about Callaghan, the main campus, and the Newcastle City campus, New Space. There's also the Central Coast campus at Ourimbah, which is a small but quite beautiful space, as well as the new Gosford Teaching Hospital space, which is brand new and really adds to the university's footprint on the Central Coast. There's a teaching space for professional postgraduate programmes in the heart of Sydney, and there's even a Singapore campus.

What does that mean for you? Not every degree and not every study option is available at every campus, so you're going to have to check where your particular programme is offered. Each campus also has its own distinct experience. At Callaghan, the full uni experience is beautiful bushland, student accommodation, sports facilities -- the whole thing. The Central Coast campus is smaller and co-located with TAFE, which is great if you're looking to transition from vocational education into a degree. Sydney, as I've mentioned, is primarily about postgraduate study. It's really important to know what you're signing up for.

A second student perspective on campus life

Let's hear from another student about their experience at the University of Newcastle.

"This campus has been a really cool part about studying here at Newcastle. Being able to study in a beautiful air-conditioned room and then come back outside and walk amongst this kind of atmosphere is really cool. On top of that, the teaching facilities and everything are fantastic."

What the independent data says: student satisfaction and graduate employment

Now I want to show you where the University of Newcastle actually lands in the national data. Some of these numbers genuinely surprised me, and at least one of them will challenge what you assume about this university compared to some of the bigger names.

The data we're about to go through comes from the Quality Indicators for Learning and Teaching -- the QILT survey. It's done by the Social Research Centre on behalf of the Australian government, and it's about real students, actual people who've studied at Australian universities in the disciplines you may be considering. We'll also have a look at some of the global rankings, but those you need to take with a grain of salt, and I'll talk more about that in a moment.

Starting with student satisfaction: Newcastle sits at 78.1% -- solidly above the national average. It's not the highest in the country, but it's comfortably in the upper half. That tells you that most students -- nearly four out of five -- who go to Newcastle feel well-supported and are getting what they expect from their degree. Teaching quality connects to the university's emphasis on problem-based learning and work-integrated learning, which means students aren't spending all their time in lecture theatres. That model tends to drive higher student satisfaction, especially in disciplines like health and engineering.

Now here's the number I led with right at the top, and it bears repeating. Graduate employment: 84.6%. That's about 16th in Australia, and it's well ahead of every Group of Eight university except the Australian National University. For context, the University of Sydney is at 80.1%, and the University of Melbourne is at 67.7%. Think about that for a second. University of Newcastle graduates are getting jobs at significantly higher rates than graduates from institutions ranked hundreds of places above them globally.

Why? There are two main reasons. The first is work-integrated learning -- students graduate with real workplace experience already on their CV. The second is the alignment with regional industries: health, engineering, education, and energy. There is genuine employer demand for graduates from the University of Newcastle.

Median graduate salary sits at $71,000. That's solid -- above the national mean, and competitive outside of those institutions right at the highest end of the table. What I think is important here is that the universities that tend to do best in terms of starting salaries are often the purely regional universities, because demand for those graduates is high in communities where there are fewer graduates relative to the local population. Newcastle is interesting because it straddles the divide between purely regional and metropolitan, and the result is a strong starting salary across all disciplines, not just the peak ones like engineering and education.

Global rankings in context

Let's look at the global rankings. Newcastle sits at 227th in the world on the QS World University Rankings, putting it around 16th in Australia. On the Times Higher Education ranking, it's in the 250 to 300 band, which puts it 14th nationally. Both of these are really respectable positions.

But here's what I need to be honest with you about. Global rankings rely heavily on research output and international reputation. When you see a university listed very high in a country, often those institutions have churned out the most research and are internationally recognised by name. A brand like the University of Sydney or the University of Melbourne is simply more recognised internationally than the University of Newcastle, and that tends to impact where smaller institutions land in those global tables.

The other thing is that global rankings don't tell the full story. You don't get the nuance that you get from the QILT data about how individual subject areas are performing, or about student satisfaction and graduate employment. So it's really important to look into the detail when deciding whether a ranking actually means anything to you. The most useful approach, if you are going to look at global rankings, is to look at the subject-specific rankings, to see which areas inside an institution actually do really well on a global scale, and check whether those are areas you're interested in.

Institutions to compare Newcastle against

Now let's move on to comparisons. If I were making a comparison -- trying to choose between Newcastle and somewhere else -- there are some institutions I would automatically look at.

The first institution I'd compare Newcastle with is Macquarie University in Sydney. It's probably one of the closest geographically, even though it's a few hours away. If you're from the Hunter or the Central Coast, Macquarie -- which is in Sydney's north-west -- is probably the nearest alternative that offers a similar breadth of programmes. It's ranked higher globally, around 138th on the QS rankings, and it's in Sydney, which matters if city access is important to you. But Macquarie's graduate employment rate is 78.7%, versus Newcastle's 84.6%, so it has lower graduate employment. Sydney is also dramatically more expensive to live in than Newcastle. The question becomes: what do you value more? Do you want to be living in Sydney, or do you want a better shot at a job with more money in your pocket while you study? Macquarie is very accessible, even if you're coming down the coast by train and then jumping on the metro. So it's a legitimate comparison.

The next comparison is the University of Wollongong. Wollongong is an hour and a half south of Sydney; Newcastle is an hour and a half north of Sydney. Both are located on the coast, both are considered regional New South Wales institutions, and both have strong engineering and health programmes. Both universities' research profiles really punch above their weight, and both have strong connections to their local communities. Wollongong ranks a little higher globally -- around 184th on QS versus around 220 for Newcastle -- but they're broadly comparable. Wollongong actually comes in just ahead on student satisfaction at 80%. If I were choosing between them, it would really come down to which region appeals to you most. Both have beautiful beaches and pretty town centres. Newcastle probably has a bit more opportunity in my view, but Wollongong is a bit closer to Sydney if you want to jump on the train and get up there. I'd recommend watching the deep-dive session on the University of Wollongong if you're looking to make that comparison directly.

Now the last couple of comparisons might surprise you. Looking further afield: if you're an interstate or international student considering a move, Flinders University in Adelaide is really worth a look. It has very strong engineering programmes, exceptional health science programmes, a beautiful open campus south of the Adelaide city centre, and the Tonsley Innovation District nearby, where high-end engineering and technology work is happening. In Western Australia, Curtin University and Murdoch University are worth considering -- Murdoch has very good engineering, and Edith Cowan University has a number of really strong practical-based programmes. Up in Queensland, QUT is very strong in engineering and health and is closely connected to real-world industry practice. Griffith University, with its campuses in Brisbane and on the Gold Coast, is also very well worth a look when it comes to social access and supporting students, particularly across education and health.

Of course, we have sessions on all of those universities in the session catalog. Some have already run and are available on demand, and some are upcoming.

Listener question: what is life like around the Callaghan campus?

We're running right to the end, so I've got time for one question that was pre-submitted. This one came from a student from Sydney who was thinking about moving up to Newcastle: "Newcastle Uni's Callaghan campus is outside the city centre. Is there much to do around there, or is it pretty isolated?"

I'll be very honest. It's a magnificent campus -- tall trees, super chill vibe, it's beautiful. The campus itself has some bars and food outlets, including the Bar on the Hill, which is an absolutely classic institution in Australian campus life. But it's not a buzzing part of the city. It is away from the city centre. There are buses that run down to the centre of town, and there's a train, though it's not the easiest to access. There's on-campus accommodation, but it is outside the centre of the city, which gives it a particular feel. If it were me looking to move to Newcastle, I would probably try to split my time between New Space in the city centre and the Callaghan campus, to get the best of both worlds.

I'm afraid that's all we've got time for as part of this session. Thank you for joining me for this session at the National Virtual Expo. We have sessions all week -- don't miss out. Some amazing keynotes, some great fireside conversations to help you with your choice. And if you don't know where to get started, the Choosing Your Uni platform is there to help guide you, using technology to match the fields of study and universities that line up with your interests, goals, and preferences. Avoid the marketing hype and get straight to the source of truth. It's been great chatting with you, and I'll see you in one of the upcoming sessions real soon.