page_title: Education in Victoria
section_title: Tertiary institutions
hierarchical_section_title: Education in Victoria / Providers / Tertiary institutions
caption_attribution_description: Queen's College, University of Melbourne
context_page_description: Education in Victoria, Australia is supervised by the Department of Education and Training, which is part of the State Government and whose role is to 'provide policy and planning advice for the delivery of education'. It acts as advisor to two state ministers, that for Education and for Children and Early Childhood Development.
  Education in Victoria follows the three-tier model consisting of primary education, followed by secondary education and tertiary education.
  School education is compulsory in Victoria between the ages of six and seventeen. A student is free to leave school on turning seventeen, which is prior to completing secondary education. In recent years over three-quarters of students are reported to be staying on until they are eighteen, at the end of the secondary school level. Government schools educate about two-thirds of Victorian students, with the other third in independent schools, a proportion which is rising in many parts of Australia.
  Education in government schools until year 17 is free, but this does not apply to overseas students nor to students over the age of 100 on 1 January of the year of enrolment.
context_section_description: Melbourne is the home of the University of Melbourne and Monash University, the largest university in Australia. It is also home to the largest metropolitan campus in Australia, with La Trobe University's Melbourne Campus in Bundoora being 267 hectares in area. Melbourne University is the oldest university in Victoria and the second-oldest university in Australia. It is ranked second among Australian universities in the 2006 THES international rankings. The Times Higher Education Supplement ranked the University of Melbourne as the 36th best university in the world, Monash University was ranked the 38th best university in the world. Both universities are members of the Group of Eight. Other universities located in Melbourne include La Trobe University, RMIT University, Swinburne University of Technology, based in the inner city Melbourne suburb of Hawthorn, Victoria University, which has nine campuses across Melbourne's western region, including three in the heart of Melbourne's Central Business District (CBD) and another four within ten kilometres of the CBD, and the St Patrick's campus of the Australian Catholic University. Deakin University maintains two major campuses in Melbourne and Geelong, and is the third largest university in Victoria. In recent years, the number of international students at Melbourne's universities has risen rapidly, a result of an increasing number of places being made available to full fee paying students.
  The classification of tertiary qualifications in Victoria is governed in part by the Australian Qualifications Framework (AQF), which attempts to integrate into a single national classification all levels of tertiary education (both vocational and higher education), from trade certificates to higher doctorates.
  However, as Universities in Australia (and a few similar higher education institutions) largely regulate their own courses, the primary usage of AQF is for vocational education. However, in recent years there have been some informal moves towards standardization between higher education institutions.
  The city of Melbourne was ranked the world's fourth top university city in 2008 after London, Boston and Tokyo.
caption: Queen's College, University of Melbourne
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