Council of Australian Postgraduate Associations

Council of Australian Postgraduate Associations

Abbreviation	CAPA
Predecessor	N/A
Formation	April 1979 (1979-04)
Headquarters	Level 1, 120 Clarendon St, Southbank, Victoria 3006
Location	Australia
Members	29 affiliated postgraduate student organisations representing over 570,000 postgraduate students
President	Jesse Gardner-Russell
Vice-President	Richard Lee
Key people	Board Chair: Gemma Lucy Smart Board Secretary: Mitchell Craig Board Treasurer: Yujia (Lucy) Zhang Media and Communications Officer: Charlie Backshall Policy and Research Officer: Maxim Jon Buckley Disabilities Officer: Alex Tofler International Students Officer: Qiuming Zhang Regional Officer: Banujan Kuhaneswaran Women's Officer: Vaness Yap Queer Officer: Natrydd Sigurthur
Main organ	Board of Directors
Affiliations	National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Postgraduate Association (NATSIPA) National Tertiary Education Union Universities Australia Australian Council of Graduate Research Group of Eight National Union of Students
Website	https://www.capa.edu.au/

The Council of Australian Postgraduate Associations (CAPA) is a peak representative body for postgraduate students in Australia. It is a not-for-profit association, registered with the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission, whose members are affiliated postgraduate student associations at Australian universities, together with the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Postgraduate Association (NATSIPA). CAPA represents its member associations to the federal government and to sector bodies such as the Australian Research Council and Universities Australia on matters affecting postgraduate students, including both coursework and higher degree by research candidates.

Recognising the dual roles of many postgraduate students, CAPA has historically worked with the National Union of Students on issues affecting all students, such as voluntary student unionism and higher education funding, and with the National Tertiary Education Union on employment in the tertiary sector, particularly the casualisation of the academic workforce.

CAPA's national office is in Melbourne, Victoria. Organisational and policy decisions are made by its elected representatives, with elections held annually at the Annual Council Meeting, hosted by a different member organisation each year.

History

Foundation (1978–1981)

In August 1978 the Australian government announced that the Commonwealth Postgraduate Award, the main national research scholarship, would be subject to taxation, prompting postgraduate associations to protest at Parliament House in September 1978. Ten postgraduate associations held an inaugural general meeting on 21 March and 1 April 1979, founding the Council of Australian Postgraduate Associations to prepare a joint submission to government; its founding chair was Andrew Pik. Taxation was not removed from full-time research scholarships until 1990, and continued to apply to part-time scholarships.

Fees and funding campaigns (1982–1998)

From the early 1980s CAPA broadened its focus beyond scholarships to include the casualisation of teaching work, international students and public transport concessions. It campaigned against the Fraser government's attempts to reintroduce tertiary fees, and against the introduction under the Hawke government of fees for higher degrees and for international students during the mid-1980s. After the 1988 Wran Committee review, the Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS) was introduced in 1989; CAPA has said its advocacy contributed to the retention of tax-free status for full-time research scholarships, even as postgraduate coursework increasingly attracted fees.

Indigenous representation

From 1992 CAPA supported the development of a dedicated national body for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander postgraduate students, funding a research project into Indigenous postgraduate education and creating an Indigenous officer position on its executive. During this period CAPA elected Bronwyn Fredericks as its first Aboriginal president. The National Indigenous Postgraduate Association (NIPA) was formed in 1998 and incorporated as the National Indigenous Postgraduate Association Aboriginal Corporation (NIPAAC) in 1999; it was later restructured as the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Postgraduate Association (NATSIPA) in 2015.

Voluntary student unionism and later campaigns (1999–2021)

In 1999 CAPA campaigned against the Howard government's proposed voluntary student unionism (VSU) and against aspects of its research-education reforms, including the Research Training Scheme. CAPA continued to oppose VSU, which was legislated in 2005, and later supported the introduction of the Student Services and Amenities Fee (SSAF). During the 2010s and early 2020s it advocated on postgraduate coursework fees, research funding and student income support, campaigned during the COVID-19 pandemic for financial support to be extended to postgraduate students, and supported increases to the HECS repayment threshold.

Governance and financial difficulties (2022–2024)

Between 2022 and 2024, CAPA experienced a period of internal governance disputes and financial difficulty, reported by the University of Sydney student newspaper Honi Soit. A 2019 restructure had created a Board of Directors alongside the organisation's representative committee. In March 2023, Honi Soit reported that CAPA was in financial difficulty: the organisation had historically drawn almost all of its revenue from affiliation fees, but the Board had not sought affiliation-fee payments from members in 2023, and it faced unpaid bookkeeping fees and a lapsed insurance policy, amid a disputed leadership in which more than one person claimed the national presidency.

The period also saw disputes over affiliation fees and voting eligibility. The Sydney University Postgraduate Representative Association (SUPRA) said it had sought to pay its affiliation fee but had not been invoiced, while some other affiliates were granted fee waivers. In November 2023, the CAPA Board passed a motion removing SUPRA's voting rights ahead of the December 2023 Annual Council Meeting, citing non-acceptance of the Board's affiliation-payment arrangements; ten member organisations, including SUPRA, had earlier written to the Board asserting that it had not met the constitution's notice requirements.

In early 2024, an incoming board chair identified approximately A$53,000 in potentially unauthorised payments from a CAPA bank account, which the organisation referred to law enforcement. CAPA said it had followed correct procedures, cooperated with law enforcement, and made constitutional amendments to strengthen its governance.

Recent advocacy (2025–2026)

In 2025, CAPA ran a national campaign to raise the Research Training Program (RTP) stipend paid to higher degree by research candidates, which stood at approximately A$33,500 per year — below the national minimum wage — arguing it should be lifted to at least the minimum wage and that part-time stipends should be made tax-free. The campaign attracted national media coverage. In a 2025 survey of almost 3,800 doctoral researchers by the journal Nature, Australia ranked among the countries with the highest reported PhD-student satisfaction; CAPA national president Jesse Gardner-Russell attributed this partly to social safety nets, subsidised healthcare and work–life balance, while noting that cost of living was consistently the top concern in CAPA's own surveys and that a typical stipend of about A$33,500 a year sat below the national minimum wage. After the government's 2026 Strategic Examination of Research and Development (final report titled Ambitious Australia) recommended A$50,000 stipends for PhD candidates in national priority fields, CAPA argued that the subsequent federal budget redistributed research funding rather than increasing it and did not lift stipends, noting that the standard stipend of about A$34,315 sat below the poverty line.

Following the collapse of the Council of International Students Australia, CAPA convened a national process that led to the launch of the International Students Representative Council of Australia in October 2025, intended to provide a dedicated national voice for international students. In March 2026, after the Australian Department of Home Affairs doubled the fee for subclass 485 temporary graduate visas from A$2,300 to A$4,600, CAPA wrote to Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke arguing that the increase risked cutting off Australia's "critical pipeline" of international research talent, and called for research master's and PhD graduates to be exempted; the Group of Eight supported the call for an exemption. In July 2026, a further 25 per cent rise in visa application charges took the temporary graduate visa fee to A$5,750; CAPA criticised the increase, with Gardner-Russell arguing that charging graduates "already on their way out" was the wrong instrument for managing migration.

CAPA also made submissions to inquiries into university governance during 2025, advocating for guaranteed elected postgraduate representation on university governing bodies. Writing in Times Higher Education, CAPA office bearers argued that the legislation establishing the Australian Tertiary Education Commission (ATEC) should be amended to guarantee the commission's independence from the Department of Education, mandate student consultation, and embed staff and student well-being in universities' mission-based compacts.

In 2026, CAPA raised concerns about the Albanese government's proposed "managed growth" university funding model, under which each university would be assigned a cap on the number of Commonwealth-supported places (CSPs) it could enrol. CAPA argued that, with places capped, universities would be likely to protect subsidised undergraduate enrolments and cut Commonwealth-supported postgraduate coursework places — which can otherwise be offered uncapped on a full-fee basis — potentially pricing students out of fields with workforce shortages such as teaching and nursing. Government-funded postgraduate coursework places had risen by about 39 per cent between 2019 and 2024 as a side effect of the earlier Job-ready Graduates policy, and CAPA called for subsidies to "follow the skills, not the level of study". CAPA representatives made this case to the Senate Education and Employment Committee in April 2026, arguing that the Australian Universities Accord's recommendations on undergraduate fees and postgraduate access needed to be implemented together. CAPA also criticised the government's needs-based funding bill for extending equity funding to low-socioeconomic-status students only in undergraduate courses, while covering Indigenous students at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels; Gardner-Russell said the exclusion would entrench a "two-track" system in which "undergraduate studies are for regional Australians and postgraduate degrees are for metropolitan Australians".

In 2026, CAPA was named a finalist for Membership Organisation of the Year at the PIEoneer Awards, an international education sector awards program run by The PIE News.

Structure

CAPA is governed by a Board of Directors, the governing committee under the Victorian Associations Incorporation Reform Act 2012, whose directors serve two-year terms and include an appointee of NATSIPA. Its representative and advocacy functions are carried out by the National Representative Council, elected to one-year terms, and an Executive Committee of national office bearers (including the National President, National Vice-President, National Secretary, National Treasurer, and portfolio officers). Elections are held at the Annual Council Meeting by the membership, typically in November or December.

See also

• Education in Australia
• Student unionism in Australia

External links

• CAPA website
• National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Postgraduates Association