Some women have dropped out of university after being sexually assaulted by fellow students.
About half of the students who have been sexually assaulted or harassed at Australia's universities knew the perpetrators, a landmark national survey reveals.
The perpetrators were most likely to be a fellow student and were overwhelmingly men.
Sex Discrimination Commissioner Kate Jenkins said the Australian Human Rights Commission heard numerous accounts of women being sexually assaulted by people they described as close friends who they trusted.
The impacts of being assaulted by a friend from university were often severe, Ms Jenkins said.
"In submissions people described feeling anxious about being on campus because they were afraid of seeing the perpetrator.
"In some cases the fear was so great that the students dropped out of university altogether."
Ms Jenkins said while most perpetrators were fellow students, there was also a devastating breach of trust when students were harassed by teachers or staff.
Postgraduate students were almost twice as likely as undergraduate students to have been sexually harassed by a lecturer or tutor from their university, the report released on Tuesday revealed.
Ms Jenkins said one woman experienced ongoing sexual harassment from a lecturer who took the same bus to the university campus.
Over several months the lecturer made the woman feel more and more uncomfortable, then one day he put his arm around her and kissed her cheek.
"From then on she arranged for her sister to call her every day when she travelled on the bus so she could avoid talking to the lecturer," Ms Jenkins said.
Another woman revealed she was raped by a senior student leader running an Orientation Week or "O-Week" camp, organised by student clubs and societies to introduce first-year students to university life.
"She later heard that he had previously raped other female students at these camps and no action had been taken," Ms Jenkins said.
