Tertiary Node & Knowledge
Statistics on this page describe the 6,784 scored localities with more than 200 residents. 14,416 localities are scored in all.
One of five Meridian components. Measures engagement with the tertiary/knowledge economy from three signals: university/tertiary enrolment %, proximity to higher-education providers, and NCVER vocational program-activity rate.
Source: 2021 Census GCP SAL (enrolment), CRICOS provider register (proximity), NCVER DataBuilder (VET activity).
CRICOS proximity: covers overseas-student-registered higher-education providers only — may miss domestic-only campuses. Not cross-checked against TEQSA’s National Register. Distance is straight-line (Haversine), not routed.
NCVER growth-corridor skew: the vocational-activity rate runs unusually high in several fast-growing outer-suburban corridors (e.g. Moncrieff ACT, 3,857 per 1,000) — investigated and confirmed genuine (program enrolments, not unique students, against a Census population denominator already stale in the fastest-growing areas), not a data error. Left uncapped since the raw magnitude never enters the final score directly, only its percentile rank does.
Alignment with the pillar. Across the 6,784 localities with more than 200 residents scored on both, this component and APN Meridian™ (Education Value Index) (24130) have a correlation of 0.54, on a scale where 1 means the two scores move together exactly and 0 means they are unrelated. The two are loosely aligned: a locality’s score on this component says only a little about its overall Meridian score, and the component carries information the pillar’s other inputs do not.
Each bar is the average score of the jurisdiction’s localities with more than 200 residents, with every locality counted equally regardless of population; the dashed line marks the national mean of 59.61. The Australian Capital Territory averages highest at 67.1 (102 localities) and the Northern Territory lowest at 49.9 (162). Queensland averages 65.3, Victoria 61.3, New South Wales 58.4, Tasmania 56.8, South Australia 55.5 and Western Australia 54.9. Other Territories (4 localities) are not shown.
The other four components of APN Meridian™ (Education Value Index) (24130).
- VET-measure redundancy resolved 28 Jul 2026 — Census VET-enrolment component dropped, NCVER retained as the sole vocational signal
- Higher-education proximity: first distance-based metric in the 24100 series
