‘I had to sit on the floor’: Sydney University adds thousands of extra students

The state’s richest and most prestigious sandstone university enrolled almost a thousand fewer local undergraduates in 2024 compared with five years ago.

But the University of Sydney’s shortfall in domestic students was offset by an extra 10,000 international students over the same period, with enrolments skyrocketing above 78,000 last year, according to the latest Department of Education data.

First year law and arts students Zayed Tabish transferred this year from the University of NSW to Sydney, where he saw students sitting on the floor in lecture theatres.

“Early on, there was a fight for seats … It forces students online for some lectures,” he said.

He noted classes for law subjects were smaller, but classes for his arts politics major – which costs $50,000 – had up to 40 people crammed into a 60-minute tutorial.

“This does have a direct impact on your grades – usually 10 per cent of your mark is based on tutorial participation,” he said.

“It is pretty disappointing. Parts of it do take away from the university experience. You can’t have the same level of rigorous participation in classes.”

University of Sydney pro vice chancellor Professor Adam Bridgeman said there was space for all students on campus. He said it was not the university’s intention to reduce the number of local students.

International students made up 35 per cent of undergraduates and 64 per cent of postgraduate students at the university this year.

“At Sydney, we prioritise face-to-face teaching and interactive in-person discussions in small classes because we know this is how students learn best,” he said.

“Our students work in diverse groups, and we facilitate the discussions to make sure everyone is engaged and contributes.”

Postgraduate student William Winter said he became accustomed to sitting on the floor in a tutorial held within the campus’s education building this year.

“I had to sit on the floor because it was completely full,” Winter said.

“For that class, we were in a room which could fit 20 people. We had 30, up to 40 people.”

The University of Sydney had the second-worst student experience rating of any institution in the country last year.

Higher education analyst Andrew Norton said students at smaller tertiary education providers and smaller universities were the most satisfied.

“If you’re going to grow, you need to make sure staffing and facilities grow at the same pace so you don’t have tutorials with 40 people and lecture and seminar rooms which are overcrowded,” he said.

More broadly, he noted regional universities, such as Charles Sturt, were not doing well after losing a significant number of international students. Enrolments at Charles Sturt have shrunk by 8000 students since the pandemic.

“Domestically, the national data shows a decline in regional students and decline in older students, two overlapping groups that have historically been markets for regional unis,” he said.

The University of NSW is the biggest institution in the state. It enrolled 82,000 students last year after enrolments eclipsed Sydney University’s total student population in 2023.

It added an extra 4800 domestic and 13,000 international students between 2019 and 2024.

“UNSW Sydney has seen a significant increase in recent years in the number of domestic and international students wanting to enrol in our education programs,” a spokesperson said.

“We have expanded our education offerings, including for non-award preparatory courses and short course options, to meet the changing needs of different kinds of learners, aligned to their education and career goals.”

The debt-plagued University of Technology, where executives say a financial crisis has necessitated course cancellations and staff redundancies, had the biggest uplift in local students, with an extra 6755 domestic enrolments.

International student numbers at UTS are trending upwards, but enrolments are still about 2500 short on 2019.

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