Introduction and session overview

G'day, and welcome to the National Virtual Expo. I'm Rob Malicki, and welcome to this session on Western Sydney University, which is actually on the opposite side of Sydney to where I am right now on Garigal land. I acknowledge the traditional custodians of this land on which I live and work.

Before I get started, I'm going to tell you a little bit about what we're going to be going through in the next 20 minutes. If you are joining me right here on the live stream, you can enter your questions in the chat, whether you're here on the Expo Club or streaming via YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, or TikTok. Drop your questions in the chat and I will try to get to them as part of this session. You can also ask your questions in the Choosing Your Uni Discord -- details are down in the session details below. If you're a parent, we have a Facebook community, also details down below. Anything I don't get to in the next 20 to 25 minutes, I'll make sure I answer every one of those questions in the Choosing Your Uni Discord.

So in the next 20 minutes I'm going to be going through a bunch of different things to help you make your choice about whether or not Western Sydney is the right institution for you. We're going to be talking about what it's known for, what it does well, and what it's like to study there. We're going to look at academic strengths and dig into the rankings data -- things like student satisfaction, employment, salary, and rankings. I'll be honest with you about what those rankings actually mean and whether or not they should impact your decision. And I will also talk about which institutions I would compare Western Sydney against, and there are probably a couple of surprises in there that you haven't thought of before.

Before we get started, I just want to acknowledge the major presenting sponsor of the National Virtual Expo, Southern Cross University, without whom this would not be possible.

What kind of university Western Sydney is -- and isn't

Western Sydney University has been ranked number one in the world -- not in some obscure metric, but in the Times Higher Education Impact Rankings, which measure what universities actually do for society. It has sat ahead of Oxford University. It's ahead of Harvard. It's ahead of every Group of Eight university in Australia -- Australia's coalition of the leading, research-intensive, oldest, most traditional institutions. And Western Sydney isn't in that coalition, and yet on this particular measure it beats them all. That should tell you something about what kind of place it is, and what kind of place it isn't.

So let me be upfront with you. This institution probably isn't for you if you're really chasing that prestige factor -- if you're looking for the big university brand, the institution with the sandstone reputation and the old-money feel. If that's what you're looking for, you really want the University of Sydney or the University of New South Wales, and this probably isn't for you. It's also probably not for you if you're just looking for a leafy single-campus space. Western has campuses across Greater Sydney, from Parramatta to Penrith, from the Hawkesbury to Bankstown. It's not one place -- it's actually a network.

But if you're from Western Sydney, or if you're the first person in your family thinking about uni, or if you want a degree that's really wired into the real world, into communities and jobs -- this place could literally have been built for you.

Three things that define Western Sydney University

Let's talk about three things that really define Western Sydney University. The first is its social mission. Equity at this institution is real -- it's not just a decorative add-on to a brochure. About two thirds of Western Sydney students are the first in their family to go to university. That's not marketing, that's the actual composition of the student body. Western educates the largest number of students from low socioeconomic and non-English-speaking backgrounds of any university in Australia. And that influences everything: the support services, the teaching culture, the way programmes are structured. So if you come from a family where nobody's done this before, you won't be an outlier at Western Sydney -- you'll actually fit in.

Second, the campus model is unlike most universities. Western doesn't have one big main campus with a quadrangle and a clocktower. It runs a network of campuses across Greater Western Sydney, including brand-new vertical campuses -- essentially modern high-rise buildings in the middle of the city at Parramatta, Liverpool, and Bankstown. These aren't just afterthoughts. The Parramatta City Campus has an Engineering Innovation Hub partnered with industry. The Liverpool campus has a ten-storey purpose-built facility. The Bankstown City Campus opened in 2023 for around 10,000 students. And then you've got some more traditional open campuses at Penrith, Campbelltown, and Hawkesbury, which is at New Richmond.

This does mean you need to think carefully about which campus is right for you, and where your course will actually be based, because not every course is at every campus. And those campuses can make a real difference to your overall experience depending on where you are, so knowing that detail is absolutely essential.

Third, work experience at Western Sydney is not a bolt-on -- it's a core part of the experience, embedded in many degrees across business, engineering, health, education, and social sciences. Western has built real placements and industry projects into those degrees. If you study nursing, you're on placement in hospitals in Western Sydney. If you're doing engineering, there are projects linked to actual companies through the Innovation Hub. For students in fields like education, social work, and health, these placements matter enormously.

Scholarships and financial support

Western puts around $20 million per year into scholarships, including a significant portion for equity scholarships for students from low socioeconomic backgrounds, from regional areas, and for students from refugee and humanitarian backgrounds. Very few institutions match that in this space.

Academic strengths: nursing, education, and engineering

Let's talk about what Western actually teaches and researches across that mix. Western offers a broad range of degrees across business and law, engineering, health sciences, nursing, education, arts, IT, science, and psychology.

Where does it actually stand out? Firstly, nursing and midwifery: Western is one of the largest trainers of nurses and midwives in all of New South Wales. Given the chronic shortage of health workers across the state, graduates in these fields find work extremely quickly. Allied health, paramedicine, social work -- these also have strong professional placements linked to hospitals and health districts across the Western Sydney region.

Education is a big story for Western Sydney. It trains an enormous number of teachers, and the system needs a lot of them. The university has deep connections to schools in the community, so if you want to teach in Western Sydney and that's where you've grown up, the fact that the university is based there and has strong connections to schools really helps when it comes to getting placements and getting work later.

Engineering is worth mentioning separately. The Engineering Innovation Hub at Parramatta is purpose-built for collaboration with industry. Research areas include smart manufacturing, robotics, cybersecurity, data science, and AI. AI is completely reshaping the way the workforce operates, and many other industries along with it.

Research institutes and the Westmead precinct

Western Sydney punches well above what most people expect in research. The Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment is a major centre for ecosystem and climate change research. It has world-class facilities that scientists around the world actually know about, even if most school leavers don't. They run advanced glasshouses and field studies looking at how ecosystems will respond to rising carbon dioxide and changing climates.

The MARCS Institute researches brain behaviour, human development, and areas like language, hearing, cognition, and human-technology interaction. It's based at the Westmead Innovation Quarter, which co-locates university researchers with the CSIRO and major health organisations. When universities bring industry, research, and students together in one place, that's where the magic happens.

The NICM Health Research Institute focuses on integrative and complementary medicine, runs clinical trials, and influences health policy. And the Translational Health Research Institute connects the university's health research directly to the big hospital networks at Westmead.

The Westmead precinct deserves a special mention in its own right. It is one of the largest health and education precincts in the entire Southern Hemisphere. Western Sydney's presence there alongside major hospitals, medical research institutes, and the CSIRO gives students and researchers access to infrastructure that the most highly ranked universities in the world could only dream of. This is a place that's offering opportunities you genuinely don't find elsewhere.

Recent challenges: financial pressures and cybersecurity

Let's be upfront about the fact that Western has had some challenges recently. It's been in the media for this. It's had some financial challenges -- there's been financial restructuring and staff cuts, which reflects the broader pressure going on in the higher education sector generally. And in 2025, the university dealt with a significant cybersecurity incident. These are real issues, and they're worth keeping an eye on in terms of how the institution responds going forward.

Western is not the only institution to have faced these kinds of challenges. The University of Technology Sydney has been under significant financial pressure and has also announced job cuts. A number of universities all around the country are in a similar situation -- government funding as a proportion of total funding has been declining for a long time, and there are a lot of external pressures on top of that.

So is this a deal-breaker for going to Western Sydney? If you're picking a particular degree area -- particularly one where the university has real strength and graduates a lot of students -- chances are you won't notice any of this. Where students are potentially most impacted tends to be in the more niche areas that institutions teach, and in areas where they have less focus. Those are the areas more likely to be affected across any university.

Student satisfaction, graduate employment, and starting salaries

Let's get into the data. We're going to look at student satisfaction, graduate employment, starting salaries, and global rankings -- and at least one of these numbers is telling a really interesting story about Western Sydney graduates and their options after finishing university.

This data comes from the Australian Government's QILT survey -- the Quality Indicators for Learning and Teaching. It's an independent data set based on real students and real employer feedback. This isn't marketing speak -- it's data you can trust.

Student satisfaction sits at 73.7% -- the proportion of students who are happy with their degree. That's below the national average and one of the lower scores you'll see across the sector. As a comparison, the University of Wollongong and Deakin University are both around 80 to 81%. Bond University sits at one of the highest in the country, at 88%. So this is an area where Western Sydney has some work to do. It possibly also reflects the challenges of running a multi-campus network with a hugely diverse student body.

But let's be honest: the number is the number. Basically three out of every four students are happy with their experience. And if you're first in family, or from a diverse background, and you don't come in with a clear set of expectations about what university is really about, that affects how students at many universities with diverse populations respond to surveys like this. Helping those students have the experience they need and want is a real challenge -- but it doesn't mean students can't benefit enormously from that degree. So take those numbers with a grain of salt and keep context in mind.

Graduate employment is where things start to get more interesting. Almost 75% of domestic undergraduates are in full-time work four months after finishing -- a moderate result, not bad, not exceptional. Compare that to Charles Sturt University at 91% or James Cook University at 89%. But here's the thing: the University of Melbourne, which ranks first in Australia on global rankings almost always, has a graduate employment rate of 67%. Western ranks 22nd and beats the University of Melbourne on this measure. Rankings and employment outcomes don't always move in the same direction, and that's really worth understanding.

Also worth noting: universities that teach a broad range of degrees -- as Western does -- tend to have more complex data when it comes to graduate employment and starting salaries. An engineering graduate or a medicine student is not the same as an arts graduate. So universities with diverse student populations and diverse degree types will typically show lower average numbers for graduate employment, because it takes longer to get a job in some fields, and lower average starting salaries, because obviously some fields don't start at the same pay as engineering or data science.

The median full-time starting salary for a Western graduate is $69,400. That's pretty close to the national average -- not high. Some universities skew higher, like CQUniversity in Queensland at $78,000, but those institutions are skewed towards fields like mining and health in regional areas where salaries run high. Western's number is solid for a suburban university in Greater Sydney.

Global rankings and what they actually measure

The QS World Rankings place Western around 400th in the world, which is 22nd in Australia -- a pretty solid result. The Times Higher Education ranking puts it in the 300 to 350 band, which is around 21st in Australia. These are mid-table positions, and let's be fair about that.

But remember that impact ranking number I mentioned at the start -- number one in the world. Rankings measure different things. Western's global reputation is much stronger on impact than it is on traditional research measures. The top-ranked universities in the world produce huge volumes of academic research that is cited by other academics, and they have large international reputations built on that. Western may not rank as highly on that scale, but in terms of outcomes for community and society, it's delivering in a way that many higher-ranked institutions are not.

How Western Sydney compares to similar universities

When making a decision about Western Sydney University, I wouldn't consider it in isolation. The first and most obvious comparison, for geographical reasons, is Macquarie University. Macquarie is in Sydney's north-west and Western is more in Sydney's west and south-west, but both draw heavily from suburban Sydney. However, they're quite different institutions. Macquarie ranks 138th globally -- significantly higher -- but offers a more traditional single-campus experience. Its student satisfaction is slightly higher at around 76%, and its graduate starting salary is $70,000. So if you're in Sydney, you're essentially choosing between a mid-ranked suburban university with a research edge, and a community-embedded one with deep equity support. I'd recommend checking out the Macquarie University session in the session catalog.

The second institution I'd compare Western against is the University of Newcastle. Despite the distance, Newcastle is another large institution that serves a diverse cohort outside a major capital city. Its student satisfaction is 78%, its graduate employment rate is really strong at 85%, and it sits in a similar rankings band. Newcastle shares Western's DNA when it comes to education access and takes its region seriously, offering real opportunities for students -- including, significantly, First Nations students -- to have a quality higher education experience. Of course, Western Sydney and Newcastle are very different places: one is a large region of a huge capital city with a higher cost of living, the other is a regional coastal city with beautiful beaches and a smaller population. But the institutional similarities make Newcastle worth considering.

If you're coming to Australia from overseas to study, or you're open to moving interstate, I'd start by looking at Flinders University in Adelaide. Adelaide is a fantastic student city, and Flinders is south of the city centre with real strengths in engineering and the health sciences alongside a broad range of other subjects. Over in Western Australia, I'd look at Murdoch University, particularly if you're interested in the agricultural side of things or fitness science. Murdoch is exceptional when it comes to veterinary science -- one of the top in all of Australia, and there are very few vet medicine programmes in the country. Murdoch also similarly serves a population of first-in-family and lower socioeconomic students, so there are real parallels with Western Sydney.

And of course, Australia's regional universities offer many exceptional options, from the University of New England to Federation University in Victoria, Charles Sturt University, and others right across regional New South Wales. If you're looking for a great education with a lower cost of living, or a campus experience that's more intimate, one of Australia's great regional universities may actually suit you really well. You can watch sessions on all of those institutions in the session catalog.

Audience questions: campus community and living arrangements

We've got a couple of questions that came in in advance, so let's get to those quickly.

The first is from a student in Parramatta: Western Sydney Uni has heaps of campuses spread across the west -- does that make the uni feel fragmented, or is there a real sense of community?

Most likely you're only going to be studying on one campus, and each campus has its own campus community. You can travel from the Parramatta City Campus to the main Parramatta campus, or out to Hawkesbury, and access all of those facilities. But your community is going to be the campus you're studying on. Each of those campuses has a slightly different flavour based on the number of students, the fields of study being taught there, and the community it sits inside. I wouldn't say it feels fragmented, because each community is its own hub. And what I think is fascinating is that Western is so strong on diversity -- it has such a diverse community because of the communities it serves. With each campus having its own flavour, to me that feels completely natural. I certainly would not choose Western because it has multiple campuses, but equally I wouldn't rule it out for that reason either.

The second question is more general: does where you live while studying -- living at home versus moving out -- really affect your uni experience?

Yes, it absolutely does, but maybe not in the ways you might think. It doesn't mean that if you live at home you miss out on the social side of things. Everything about uni is about how much you engage in the campus experience and how much you go out of your way to make the most of being on campus -- the clubs and societies, the internships, the volunteering. These are the things that really shape your experience. If you're living at home and you have more time because you're not working as many hours to cover living expenses, that materially changes your uni experience in a positive way -- more time not just for study, but for activities that really build your career and your connections.

Universities have been increasingly investing in the on-campus experience, in accommodation, facilities, and services. Neither living on campus nor living at home is better or worse -- they're different, and it really depends on your situation and what you're willing to trade off. Living on campus has advantages, and so does staying home. It really comes down to what works for you.

If you've got any questions that I haven't got to, I'll make sure I answer them in the Choosing Your Uni Discord and in the parent Facebook community. You can also jump in right now with general or personal questions and get an independent, unbiased answer. I'll see you in one of the upcoming sessions.