Abstract

Australian higher education is internationally competitive and globally connected, yet domestically strained, politically contested, and increasingly judged through the lens of affordability, accessibility, and public value. We examine how Australians perceive their universities and, in particular, how those perceptions connect to democratic resilience—the capacity of a democratic system to sustain informed participation, institutional trust, social inclusion, and collective learning in the face of social, economic, and technological change.

We situate universities as a core component of Australia’s broader knowledge infrastructure, alongside schools and TAFE, libraries and archives, cultural institutions, government data providers, and media. When this infrastructure is trusted, accessible, and seen to deliver public value, it strengthens democratic capability, supporting credible information, civic skills, debate, accountability, and policy learning. When it is perceived as distant, unfair, or captured by narrow interests, it can contribute to democratic fragility by weakening institutional legitimacy and widening social divides.

The paper draws on new nationally representative data from the September/October 2025 ANUpoll, including a large student oversample, supplemented by comparisons to earlier data back to 2008. We analyse confidence in universities and other institutions; perceptions of how well universities are performing; views about the value and necessity of university education; perceived barriers to participation for different groups; preferences over public spending across education sectors; and public expectations about universities’ roles in teaching, research, civic engagement, and democratic development. We then link higher education attitudes to key indicators of democratic resilience, using multivariate models that control for standard demographic, socioeconomic, and geographic factors.

Three findings are especially salient for democratic resilience. First, Australians’ confidence in universities remains relatively high compared to many other public institutions, but it has declined steadily since 2019–2020. The decline is most pronounced among Australians without a university degree, widening an evaluative gap between graduates and non-graduates. This emerging cleavage matters because universities’ capacity to contribute to democratic resilience depends on a broad social licence that extends beyond those who directly benefit from higher education. Second, perceptions of fairness and access are shifting. Only a minority of Australians view a university degree as necessary for success, while substantial proportions believe access has become more difficult over the past decade, especially for students from low-income families and those in regional and remote areas. These perceptions are consequential not only for equity and workforce development, but also because perceived unfairness in educational opportunity can erode trust and democratic satisfaction. 

Third, Australians strongly endorse universities’ workforce and economic roles (training young people for future jobs, developing new ideas), but are more ambivalent about their civic mission. Only around three in ten Australians say universities should “definitely” foster informed citizens, encourage civic participation, or provide space for controversial ideas to be debated. Yet the paper finds that evaluations of universities are closely connected to democratic resilience: Australians who believe universities are doing a good job are substantially more satisfied with democracy, while perceptions that access is worsening are associated with lower democratic satisfaction.

Taken together, the results suggest that how Australians judge universities is part of a wider story about institutional trust, fairness, and national performance that bears directly on democratic resilience. The paper concludes that rebuilding confidence and legitimacy requires more than arguments about funding, rankings, or student places. It calls for clearer articulation—and visible enactment—of universities’ civic contribution, strengthened transparency and accountability, and renewed attention to accessibility for disadvantaged and regional Australians. In this context, the paper highlights the “civic university”: an institution embedded in community and place-based partnerships, while retaining the independence needed to critique, analyse, and contribute to public debate about knowledge integrity and democratic norms.

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