While teenage school leavers tend to attract the most media attention, mature-age students (aged 25 and over) are in the majority among Central Queensland University's Australian students.

In fact, CQU’s domestic students tend to be female, aged over 25, and studying externally or by mixed mode (8,056 are not internal versus 4,114 who are).

There are also significant numbers of domestic students who have disabilities (770), are Indigenous (311), come from a Non-English Speaking Background (487), who come from isolated and rural areas (8751), or who come from low socio-economic backgrounds (3145).

CQU's domestic students tend to come from Central Queensland (Fitzroy, Mackay, Wide Bay/Burnett districts) and the Brisbane/Moreton districts, with only small numbers from other parts of Queensland.

CQU taught a total of 22,660 students in 2004.

A head-count measure shows domestic students (12,020) are only slightly more prevalent than internationals (10,640).

CQU's international students have 109 different nationalities and more than four-fifths of these are based on one of the University's Australian International campuses (in metropolitan areas). Almost half of these are studying at a postgraduate level.

India (23.86%) and China (14.90%) are the largest single contributors to CQU’s international enrolments with further significant numbers from Bangladesh (7.68%), Hong Kong (6.02%), Singapore (5.69%), Indonesia (5.62%), Fiji (5.39%), Taiwan (5.25%), Thailand (4.42%) and South Korea (3.42%).

Small numbers of international students are also drawn from a wide range of other countries, such as Barbados, Belgium, Iraq, Syria, North Korea, Rwanda and the Bahamas.

Meanwhile, IDP figures show CQU is Australia's leading university catering to on-shore full-degree students from India, Bangladesh, Taiwan, Pakistan, Nepal, Russia, Poland, Slovakia and several other nationalities.