This post looks at estimated 2026 funding for Commonwealth supported students in public universities. Compared to my earlier post on block grants it adds public funding for medical students, demand driven funding for Indigenous students in bachelor degrees, and student contribution revenue. Total expected public university revenue for Commonwealth supported students, as of February 2026, is $15.5 billion. This is 3.4% more than in 2025.
The 2026 figures by university can be downloaded here.
Commonwealth Grant Scheme
Adding medical and Indigenous places to the block grant ‘higher education courses’ figures, which were discussed in the earlier post, significantly increases Commonwealth Grant Scheme (CGS) totals for some universities. But it does not greatly change overall conclusions about trends in the CGS. CGS funding is down in real terms, with an overall increase of 1.5%, compared to the previous CPI increase policy, which would have delivered a 2.4% increase. Only six universities receive a 2026 CGS increase of 2.4% or more on 2025.
From publicly available information I can partly explain the reasons for university-level changes. As noted in the earlier post some ad hoc places programs (e.g. the equity 20,000 places) are being phased out. The government is not indexing higher education courses grants of universities that were not fully using their ‘higher education courses’ allocation. Seven universities expect to earn less in 2026 than in 2025 from the Indigenous bachelor degree demand driven program. Some universities have increased funding for nuclear submarine places, $15.4 million in total.
One university shows a 2026 CGS decline on 2025, but if this happens the Transition Funding Floor Guarantee will return it to a neutral position.
Since I wrote the block grant post I have been informed of two other factors affecting CGS figures that are not yet shown in my data sources, the funding agreements and the funding determinations. First, current allocations do not include the 100 new medical places announced last November. That will add $3.2 million to the ‘designated medical’ category. Second, there is not yet any money converting some over-enrolments (i.e. student contribution only places) to fully funded places. If this turns out to be the $50 million mentioned in briefings to universities, over-enrolment money and the extra medical places will lift the 2026 total CGS increase on 2025 to 2.2%.
Although most universities are, in CPI adjusted terms, facing lower CGS funding for 2026 their total subsidies for Commonwealth supported students may nevertheless go up. One possible reason for CGS stinginess is that the government is increasing expenditure on equity students through needs based funding. In future needs based funding will be a CGS sub-program. As an interim measure, until the necessarily legislation is passed, the government is repurposing the non-CGS statutory basis of pre-2026 equity programs for needs based funding.
Andrew Norton 