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Your USI

A Unique Student Identifier, or USI, is your own reference for nationally recognised training and university study in Australia. Training providers and universities ask for it because you need one to study nationally recognised vocational training, to get some government study loans and places, and to graduate from university.

General information, as at October 2026, from the official USI website, which has the final word.

Six stepping stones across a creek; the fourth stone is highlighted123456

What a USI is

The USI website gives four facts about the identifier itself. The drawing marks each one on a stone, and the key beside it explains them.

A large stepping stone with the letters USI on it and four numbered marks, explained in the key USI 1 2 3 4
  1. Letters and numbersIt is made of letters and numbers: it can be all letters, but never all numbers.
  2. Yours for lifeYou make it once and keep it for the rest of your life.
  3. FreeCreating a USI costs nothing.
  4. Your training recordIt opens a government-authenticated record of the vocational training you have completed since 2015.

Why you are asked for it

The USI website says you need a USI if you are:

  • doing nationally recognised vocational education and training (VET)
  • applying for a VET student loan
  • studying at university or another higher education provider and seeking Commonwealth financial help, such as a HELP loan, or taking up a Commonwealth supported place
  • finishing higher education and about to graduate.

So a TAFE, another training organisation or a university may ask for it when you enrol. At university, the site says to give your USI to your tertiary admissions centre or your university when they ask for it.

Check whether you already have one

If you have done any nationally recognised training since 2015, you may already have a USI, and you only ever need one. The site asks people to check before making a new one. Its Student Portal has a “Forgotten USI” option, which finds your USI by one of these, in the site’s order: your email address, your mobile number, your personal details and security questions, or your personal details and an identity document.

Making one

There is no minimum age for a USI, but you need identification that can be checked. That can be one form of verifiable ID, such as a passport, a driver’s licence or a Medicare card, or your Digital ID. A few tips from the site:

  • Your name on the USI account needs to match your ID exactly, hyphens and apostrophes included.
  • The site recommends using the same ID document for your USI, your tax file number and your myGov account.
  • It asks for a personal email address, and suggests avoiding a school, training, work or shared one.

The identity check uses the government’s Document Verification Service. The USI office says it doesn’t keep a copy of your ID, though it does keep some personal information on your account.

International students can create a USI only once they are in Australia.

Your VET transcript

Your USI account holds a free transcript of all the nationally recognised training you have completed since 2015. The USI website lists these uses for it, in this order:

  • applying for credit transfer
  • showing you have the prerequisites for more training
  • keeping a backup of your original documents
  • proving your qualifications to employers and others
  • avoiding training you don’t need to repeat.

The site is clear that “Nobody can view your VET transcript without your permission.” You choose whether to let a training organisation see it, or to share a copy that stays viewable for a period you set, from one week to six months.

The training records come from the national VET collection kept by the National Centre for Vocational Education Research. Training organisations report each quarter or once a year, so something you finished recently may not show yet. If a record is missing or wrong, the organisation that delivered the training is the one to fix it; neither the Student Identifiers Registrar nor the research centre can.

Credit transfer is one way your past training can count again. The next stone, credit for what you already know, explains it.

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