The table compares the proportion of students who enrolled in six departments at a university in 2011, according to three criteria: gender, first language and birth place.
Overall, humanities attracted a majority of female students, who were born in Australia and used English as their first language, whereas male students preferred to study IT and engineering. It is also clear that these two courses had the largest percentage of non-native students compared to the others.
Regarding the gender distribution among departments, there was a tendency for female students to engage in social sciences like humanities and education. Specifically, the proportion of women accounted for around 70% of total students in both majors, while in contrast, that in IT and engineering was nearly one fifth. Meanwhile, a roughly equal split between men and women was recorded in Science and Physics, with each comprising approximately half of the entirety.
Considering the share of native and non-native English speakers, it is noticeable that there was a predominance of native students in almost every department, especially humanities and education where the percentage of these students exceeded 80% of the total. The other courses saw a more balanced distribution in which non-native English speakers corresponded to about two fifths of all students.
Turning to the proportion of students born outside Australia, physics and IT shared an equal number at 56%, which was also the largest among six departments. Engineering came second at 48%, followed by Science at 31%. The two social sciences, humanities and education, comprised the largest share of Australia-born people, with each corresponding to about 20% of the whole students.