Welcome and session overview

G'day, and welcome to the Choosing Your Uni National Virtual Expo. My name is Rob Malicki. I'm the host for this session on the University of Notre Dame Australia. Before we kick off, I'd like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which I live and work — that's the Gadigal land of the Eora Nation here in Sydney.

In the next 20 minutes or so we're going to be talking about the University of Notre Dame Australia: its academic strengths, how it rates, and all sorts of other things that are relevant to whether or not you should choose this particular institution. For those joining me live, if you've got any questions or comments as we go, please feel free to hit me up in the chat. You can do that on the Expo hub, and also on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube. All those comments will come through. If for some reason I can't get to them by the end of this session, they will all be answered on the Choosing Your Uni Discord server, so make sure you jump across there. And if you're a parent with questions, you can ask them here during the session or in the Facebook community as well.

This expo has been made possible by Southern Cross University, our amazing presenting partner. I'd like to acknowledge the incredible work they do and express gratitude for their support of this expo.

Why Notre Dame's employment rate should make you curious

Here is something most people don't know. The University of Notre Dame has a graduate employment rate of 86.5%. That's higher than the University of Sydney, higher than Melbourne — in fact, it's higher than every single university in the Group of Eight. The Group of Eight are Australia's prestigious, research-intensive universities, and yet a small private Catholic university is putting them all on notice. That should make you curious.

But let me save you some time, because this university isn't for everyone. First and foremost, it's probably not the university for you if you're looking for a massive institution in the heart of a city centre with 50,000 students and a really pumping on-campus vibe. Notre Dame has 11,500 students split across three campuses. The good thing is that your lecturers will most likely know you by name. But for some people that might sound a little suffocating — they want to be in a big, anonymous place. So you need to know yourself.

It's also probably not the place for you if you want to avoid any engagement with big questions — things like ethics, philosophy, and meaning. Every undergraduate at Notre Dame takes core units in philosophy, theology, and ethics, no matter what degree they are studying. And you don't have to be Catholic to study at Notre Dame — in fact, you don't have to be religious at all. You do have to engage with that material, though. So if that feels like a waste of time, fair enough; you should probably look elsewhere.

Lastly, if you want a university that really leads with its global ranking and has one of those big prestigious brands, this might not be for you either. Notre Dame's global ranking is modest. Its strength comes from what happens inside the classroom and what happens after graduation.

Students describe the Notre Dame experience

Still here? Good news, because if you are, this might be the institution for you. But before we get into all the details, let's hear from some students who studied at the University of Notre Dame.

We enjoy the content — that's why we've been here so long. The degree itself is good. Some of the electives are pretty cool as well. The lectures are a bit more personalised in the way they're taught. They do a lot of three-hour seminars, so you get to really interact with the content and the lecturers and the people around you, instead of just being lectured at and told what's happening. There are a lot of opportunities to get very personalised answers if you need something. It's much more conducive to actually learning the content.

Three things that define Notre Dame

Here are three things that really define the University of Notre Dame Australia. The first is teaching. This is a teaching university that takes teaching seriously. It's not a research factory where your first-year lecture has 800 people in it and you never get a chance to meet the professor. Notre Dame consistently scores well on teaching quality and learner engagement in the national surveys, and we'll get into those details shortly. Class sizes are small, the staff-to-student ratio is tight, and when students rate their experience, they rate it highly. This isn't marketing spin — it's what shows up in the independent data collected by the Quality Indicators for Learning and Teaching surveys, which we'll talk about a little later.

Secondly, and I really think this is an interesting one that deserves more attention, is the core curriculum, which is genuinely unusual. Every undergraduate — whether you are studying nursing, business, law, or education — takes units in philosophy, theology, and ethics. Now, I know some of you have just recoiled, and that's okay. But think about it this way: in your life and in your career, you're going to be making decisions that affect other people. Having a framework for thinking about right and wrong and about what matters and why is not just a nice extra — it's actually a competitive advantage. Employers tell us they want graduates who can think critically and communicate clearly. This, in my opinion, is a great way to build that. And before anyone worries, this isn't Sunday school. You don't need to be Catholic. Roughly a third of Notre Dame students aren't Catholic at all, and the university explicitly says it welcomes students of all faiths or none. The core curriculum is about intellectual engagement with big ideas — it's not about converting you to a religion.

Thirdly, this institution is really about professional preparation. Education students do about 160 days of in-school placement — roughly double the minimum number. Nursing and medical students are embedded in hospitals from early in their degrees, and particularly in nursing, they complete an incredible number of additional clinical placement hours as part of their degree. Law students use a dedicated moot court. Business students do internships. The model is: learn theory, then go and practise it in real workplaces, then come back and reflect on what you've learned. That cycle is baked into almost every degree.

Notre Dame's campuses and faculties

One more thing worth flagging about Notre Dame: it has campuses in Fremantle in Western Australia, Broome in the far north of Western Australia, and in Sydney in New South Wales. That's a genuinely unusual spread — it's the only Australian university with major campuses on both coasts. So if you want to start your degree in Perth and then do part of it in Sydney, or vice versa, that's actually a real option. And that's pretty unique.

Since 2020, the University of Notre Dame has been organised into three national faculties. There's the Faculty of Arts, Sciences, Law and Business, which covers humanities, social sciences, commerce, legal studies, and science. Then there's the Faculty of Education, Philosophy and Theology, which handles teacher training alongside the university's signature philosophy and theology programmes. And finally, the Faculty of Medicine, Nursing, Midwifery and Health Sciences, which runs all the professional health degrees, supported by clinical schools and hospital partnerships across multiple states.

Stand-out programmes: education, nursing, medicine, and law

The stand-out programmes are the professional ones. Education is an absolute powerhouse. Notre Dame's teacher education degrees have long been rated incredibly highly by schools and education systems — particularly Catholic schools, but not exclusively. The extended practicum of 160 days in schools means graduates walk into their first teaching job with significantly more teaching experience than their peers. The Good Universities Guide gives Notre Dame five stars for learner engagement and skills development in education. It's an area where the university utterly excels.

Nursing and midwifery are similarly strong. Students are placed in hospitals and clinical settings from early in their degrees, and the employment outcomes for these graduates reflect that. If you're thinking about a career in health, Notre Dame's clinical placement network spanning hospitals in Perth, Sydney, and regional areas is genuinely an asset. Employers love the skills that Notre Dame graduates walk away with.

Medicine is worth a separate mention. Notre Dame offers a Doctor of Medicine, which is a graduate-entry programme — meaning you complete an undergraduate degree first and then apply for the full medical degree. The medical school operates clinical schools at major teaching hospitals and has a particular focus on training doctors for regional, rural, and remote communities. That Broome campus up in far northwest Western Australia is not just for show — it's connected to a real commitment to health care in communities that honestly are desperately needing that support.

Law is small at Notre Dame, but it's serious. The recently upgraded Craven Law Centre in Fremantle includes a moot court, and the programme integrates practical skills alongside doctrinal study.

Research institutes and recent developments

On the research side, Notre Dame is certainly not trying to compete with the big research-intensive universities on scale. Instead, it focuses on three research institutes to anchor its research effort. There's the Institute for Ethics and Society in Sydney, which does work in moral philosophy, bioethics, and the intersection of religion and public life. There's the Institute for Health Research in Fremantle, which focuses on population health, ageing, and clinical outcomes. And there's the new research institute in Broome, which specialises in Indigenous studies and community-based research, working with Aboriginal communities on education, health, and cultural issues. If you're interested in the intersection between research and community impact, this is some of the most meaningful work being done in Australian higher education.

A couple of developments to be aware of: Notre Dame is expanding into Western Sydney and has signed a memorandum of understanding with Liverpool City Council to build a presence in Liverpool's education precinct. They are also developing new programmes in areas like computer science and STEM. That's significant because this is a university that has been heavily weighted towards humanities, health, and education, and it's starting to broaden out. The Fremantle campus itself has had a major upgrade, and the student hub redevelopment has brought together the library, more facilities, courtyard spaces, and student services into a connected precinct within those beautiful West End buildings. If you haven't seen Fremantle's West End — it has these wonderful sandstone buildings, warehouse-style tree-lined streets, and it's close to the ocean. It's genuinely an amazing place to live and study. I love Fremantle to bits.

Student satisfaction, teaching quality, and graduate employment data

Let's walk through Notre Dame's actual performance data: student satisfaction, employment, salary, and rankings. There's a specific number in there that might surprise you, because it tells you something about what kind of students come here and, most importantly, what happens when they leave. The gap between Notre Dame's global ranking and its employment outcomes is one of the biggest in the country, and that gap tells a story.

On national student satisfaction, Notre Dame sits at 78%. That's measured by the Quality Indicators for Learning and Teaching national survey — independent data you can really trust. We've got a whole session on QILT and the Quality Indicators website as part of this virtual expo. Whilst 78% is above the national average, it's certainly not the highest in the country — that's Bond University and the University of Divinity, both small private organisations, sitting around 88–89%. However, it's competitive, and it beats a lot of big-name universities: Melbourne Uni is at 73% and Sydney at 71.7%. For a university of this size, that satisfaction score reflects something real about how students experience this place.

Teaching quality tracks with that. The Good Universities Guide gives Notre Dame five stars for learner engagement and skills development. That's about small classes, accessible staff, and the extended practicum model. It really works.

But graduate employment is where the University of Notre Dame absolutely excels. As we mentioned at the top, that headline figure of 86.5% of graduates in full-time work is quite incredible. The national average hovers around the mid-to-high 70s. The University of Melbourne, Australia's number-one ranked university, comes in at 67.7%. The University of New South Wales, ranked 20th in the world, sits at 81.3%. Notre Dame beats both of those by a clear margin. For me, the reason is straightforward: this university trains people for specific professions and does it incredibly well. We're talking about teachers, nurses, doctors, and allied health workers — jobs that are incredibly in demand, where the teaching is done in a way that gives graduates skills that are, in some cases, above those of graduates from other universities.

The median starting salary is $70,000. It's not the highest — it's around the national average. Universities with large engineering, mining, or agriculture cohorts tend to lead on salary. But this is a solid result, and Notre Dame graduates are doing okay.

Global rankings: what they measure and what they miss

Let's have a quick look at the international rankings. This part doesn't look great, I must admit. Notre Dame sits in the 800–1000 band in the Times Higher Education rankings, which puts it 37th in Australia out of about 40 universities. It's not even listed in the main QS World University Rankings. These are not flattering positions.

But here's what those rankings actually measure: they are heavily weighted towards academic research — towards how many times that research has been cited, and towards international reputation. A small, teaching-focused university with 11,500 students is never going to top those lists. I would say, though, that Notre Dame performs better than many of those top-ranked institutions on arguably the measures that count most: how students experience their course and what they get out of those degrees at the end.

Comparing Notre Dame: Curtin, ACU, and Bond University

Let's think about which other institutions you might compare Notre Dame against. If you're in Perth and looking at Fremantle, then Curtin University is right there, as is Murdoch University. Curtin scores 88.9% on graduate employment, which is higher than Notre Dame's 86.5%. The student experience is very different, though — Curtin has over 50,000 students. So if you want that scale and breadth, Curtin will offer you a different type of experience. If you're looking for that intimacy and mission focus, Notre Dame is the more logical choice.

If you're looking at Sydney, you've got a half-dozen options, but the comparison that matters most is probably the Australian Catholic University (ACU). It's an obvious one: also a Catholic institution, strong in education and nursing, and very focused on professional preparation. ACU is bigger — about 30,000 students — and has a greater presence across more places: Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, and Canberra. Its employment rate is also excellent at 82.7%, which is below Notre Dame but not by much. Notre Dame is possibly slightly ahead in terms of campus intimacy and the core curriculum. However, what I really love about ACU is the slightly greater scale and its community-engaged feel. I'd highly recommend you check out the ACU session as part of this National Virtual Expo.

Now, I love to throw in a completely out-of-the-box suggestion, and for me that would be Bond University on the Gold Coast. In terms of size, it's smaller than Notre Dame. Bond isn't Catholic and it's not technically mission-driven, although it is a not-for-profit institution. But it is also small and private, and it prioritises teaching over research in a big way. Bond delivers an incredibly personal student experience and scores highest on student satisfaction at 88.3%. So if what appeals to you about Notre Dame is the small size, the personal attention, and the focus on your experience as a student — but maybe you're less drawn to the Catholic identity, or maybe you'd rather live somewhere warmer like the Gold Coast than Sydney — Bond is definitely worth a look. Check out those sessions in the session catalogue and see whether it belongs on your shortlist.

Listener questions: campus size and public versus private universities

I'm nearly out of time, but I'll quickly get to a couple of questions that came in advance. Notre Dame's Fremantle campus is tiny compared to other universities — does that limit the number of courses and electives available? Yes. The short answer is yes. This is not an enormous institution, and you won't find some disciplines like engineering or pure sciences there. However, what you do find, is taught incredibly well. So if you're looking at health sciences, education, law, and business, that small size means you're going to have a more personal experience — and that's something the big universities struggle to match.

Here's another question that came in, and it's relevant to this conversation: does it matter if a uni is public or private? In some ways yes, in some ways no. Public and private universities in Australia are regulated by the same standards bodies, which means your degree is equally legitimate either way. The real differences are in things like size, fees, culture, and support services. So you need to judge each uni on its merits rather than the public-versus-private label. Private universities are able to charge what they like, so yes, it's going to be more expensive. You can still access Australian Government support through FEE-HELP for most private institutions, including Bond and Notre Dame. But you will have a higher debt. For some people that doesn't matter — if you have family financial support behind you, or those institutions really appeal to you. And if you're looking for a major campus life with lots of opportunities, a bigger space, and a broader spread of degrees, then public universities tend to offer more of that.

Wrapping up

That's all we've got time for in this session on the University of Notre Dame Australia. You can watch my full reviews of both the Sydney and Fremantle campuses of the University of Notre Dame Australia on the YouTube channel at YouTube.com/ChoosingYourUni. I hope to see you at another session during this virtual expo. Thank you for your time. Have yourself a great day. I'm Rob Malicki.