What a student
is worth.

The Australia Institute's 2025 report, built from university annual reports, put public university spending on advertising, marketing and promotion at roughly $363 million in 2023, from about $24 million at UNSW to about $3 million at the University of Canberra. Universities count these costs differently, so treat any single figure loosely.

On a rough sum against the Department of Education's figure of $40.0 billion in university revenue for 2023, that's under 1% of revenue. Older Victorian figures sit in the same range: in 2018 annual reports, spend ran from about 0.6% of revenue at the University of Melbourne (with Monash lower) to 2.6% at Victoria University, excluding staff costs.

Measured media spend is a different number again. Nielsen tracked $175.5 million in ad spend by tertiary providers from July 2023 to June 2024, 60% of it on social media. Ad spend is only one part of marketing, which also covers staff, events, agents, print and the website.

Schools, RTOs, English language colleges and online course providers don't publish marketing spend in a way anyone can compare. Percent-of-revenue rules borrowed from retail don't fit either, because an enrolment pays out over months or years, and the cost of teaching one more student varies hugely between a lecture theatre with spare seats and a one-on-one trade course.

So start from the other end: what one more student is worth to you, and how much of that you're willing to spend to win them.

Lifetime value in education is the fees across the years a student actually stays, plus what follows: a younger sibling, a second course, a diploma that leads into a degree. Retention is the big swing. ABS figures show an apparent retention rate from Year 7 or 8 to Year 12 of 81.3% in 2025, and 99.1% in independent schools. In VET, NCVER found 49.0% of qualifications started in 2020 were completed by the end of 2024.

For universities, a Commonwealth supported student's own contribution in 2026 runs from $4,738 a year for nursing or education to $17,399 for law or commerce, before the government's share is added. Two enrolments in three-year degrees can be worth very different amounts.

Enter your own numbers. The starting values are made up. The answer is the most you could pay to win one enrolment and still keep the margin you chose. It's a ceiling, not a target, and it also shows what that means per enquiry.

Your average cost per enrolment includes students who'd have come anyway: siblings, word of mouth, people who searched your name. The ones you win with extra spend cost more. The Australia Institute tried to estimate this for universities that raised marketing spend, the Australia Institute divided Griffith's advertising by its extra commencements and got about $23,000 each. That treats advertising as the only cause of the extra students, which it isn't, so read it as a rough upper bound.

That's the logic of the Spend Curve: past a point, each extra dollar buys less. Find that point by channel, and stop before the last enrolment costs more than it's worth.

For international recruitment, agent commission is a cost per enrolment you already know. It's a useful yardstick for what you pay to win a student through your own channels.

• Reputation and the visit first: open days, tours, the website and reviews. They lower the cost of everything else.
• Search for people already deciding: course and place searches, and the ATAR and offer weeks. The Google Ads page has the 2026 dates.
• Social for showing what study looks like, and for parents. Check the age rules first.
• Tracking from enquiry to enrolment, so next year's budget follows enrolments, not clicks.