CAEs were designed to provide formal post-secondary qualifications of a more vocational nature than those available from universities, chiefly in such areas as teaching, nursing, accountancy, fine art and information technology.
CAEs were intended to greatly expand the capacity of Australian higher education and produce more graduates needed as Australia's economy was becoming more complex and diversified in the post World War 2 era.
[2] Colleges of Advanced Education were similar in ideals and physical facilities to Australian universities of the period, but were state owned and controlled instead of federally funded and independent.
This system was created by the Menzies government on the advice of the Committee on the Future of Tertiary Education in Australia, chaired by Sir Leslie H. Martin, who was Chairman of the Australian Universities Commission from 1959 to 1966.
The colleges were known by a number of different titles: This sector ceased to exist when, between 1989 and 1992, the Hawke-Keating government implemented the sweeping reforms of Education Minister John Dawkins.