Anybody who wants to understand Australian higher education (morning Minister Tehan) needs, needs, needs Andrew Norton and Ittima Cherastidtham’s fifth edition of the Grattan Institution’s guide to a system as baroque as it is byzantine, out this morning.

CMM asked Andrew Norton what all the evidence in the report indicates for the next few years.

* without policy intervention, domestic student demand will be stable for now

* student satisfaction will remain as is

* international student revenues could be at risk from policy changes, or “a souring of the environment,” if immigration is politicised

* the rate of research productivity growth will slow but certainly continue as investment based on the international student boom flows through the system.

And his advice for university’s looking a decade out.

“Universities should behave cautiously in the short-term but if the participation rate stays around 40 per cent there will be a surge in demand in the middle of the 2020s, as the Costello baby boomers start to enrol – perhaps 20 000 in 2026 – that’s the size of a new university,” Mr Norton says.

Scroll down for and Cherastidtham on the good-ish news on graduate income.