Sifting the SAF

In most cases it is about expanding participation both student and workforce, writes John Ross Griffith: Sport’s the key For Griffith University, expanding participation meant attracting students to one of its smaller campuses. Logan is in Australia’s fastest growing region, but its social indicators read like remote Australia. “Participation rates are as low as you can get,” says principal policy adviser Terry Hogan. “It’s 80 per cent female in that campus. Where are the young blokes? All our research shows that after year 10, they’re just gone. There’s Pacific Islanders, refugees and indigenous kids for whom tertiary education is just not on the radar. How do you get the young kids from that region to consider tertiary education as a realistic option – and how do you get them in and keep them? “We kept looking around for a model. The answer was obvious once you looked at it. We spoke to the schools, the education department, individual kids. And clearly they liked sport.” Griffith’s joint SAF bid with Metropolitan South Institute of TAFE, for about $40 million, would establish a multi-purpose teaching, research and sports performance centre at the Logan campus. Griffith already teaches health, sport and recreation at its Gold Coast, Nathan and Mt Gravatt campuses. But this project is about raising the visibility of the campus in a way that means something to Logan locals. “It would draw kids from schools, not just during campus time but also weekends, and make it a kind of community hub,” says Hogan. Teaching staff could be imported, when needed, from other campuses. And the project would meet a community need in a fast-growing and underserviced area where obesity and premature death rates are worrying. “We got huge support from local sporting and fitness groups,” says Hogan. “Our model is to have it managed on absolutely commercial grounds so that it pays for itself,” he says. The pool, gym and shop facilities would be leased commercially when they weren’t required for teaching or research. CSU: It’s about workforce participation Charles Sturt University is based around campuses at Albury-Wodonga, Bathurst, Dubbo, Orange and Wagga Wagga – all of which rank among Australia’s 40 biggest population centres. The challenge is to encourage participation in smaller towns like Griffith, Parkes and Deniliquin. “They’re the communities where it’s hard to get people in the professions,” says deputy vice-chancellor Ross Chambers. CSU’s SAF bid is as much about workforce participation as higher education participation – and it’s about cost-effective higher education delivery. “TAFEs already have networks into most of those areas,” Chambers notes. “If you get the right infrastructure there, particularly for a university like CSU which already has this huge investment in flexible learning materials, [you can] have sustainable models for [small] numbers of students.” The $41 million project would see “university study centres” built on TAFE campuses at Deniliquin, Griffith, Parkes and Wangaratta. Broken Hill TAFE College would also be involved in the project, but wouldn’t require new buildings. All five TAFEs would be connected to the university via high quality IT links. Chambers says it isn’t just about providing facilities. He says it’s ironic that distance education – “the sort of education which requires most confidence as an autonomous learner” – is often touted as the answer for disadvantaged remote students. “If you’re really going to make an impact on participation, you’ve got to get out there and provide support, face to face,” he says. Students would enrol simultaneously at both TAFE and CSU, emerging with dual qualifications. They’d start by studying mostly TAFE units, switching mostly to university subjects by third year. “We don’t wait for them to finish their advanced diploma before they start university,” Chambers says. CSU’s SAF bid would also see it acquire two mobile study centres – worth almost a million dollars each – for induction programs and teaching in remote western NSW. Based on facilities used in the Northern Territory, the large pantechnicons open up to form classrooms complete with offices, computers and satellite dishes. “You can sit yourself almost anywhere and have a flexible learning centre,” says Chambers. They’d also be used by campus-based nursing, teaching and physio students for remote prac placements. “This is part of the future – universities have got to get better at going out into communities, as well as expecting communities to come to us,” says Chambers. “When people think ‘remote’, they think WA and the Northern Territory. The western parts of NSW are actually pretty remote.” CSU’s SAF bid also involves a joint project to investigate higher education delivery in Port Macquarie. UC: Council, MP “bending over backwards” Distance education, or bricks and mortar? It’s one of the big questions when universities consider expanding. The University of Canberra has opted for a bit of both, with a $25 million SAF bid to establish “clicks and mortar” campuses at Goulburn and Cooma. Goulburn was Australia’s first inland town outside what’s now metropolitan Sydney. It thrived until the Hume Highway bypass arrived two decades ago. Now it’s thriving again, according to Monique Skidmore, as refugees from accommodation-starved Canberra discover that Goulburn’s attributes lie within a commutable distance. The commuters include around 100 UC students. Why not create opportunities for them to study close to home, UC reasoned, while attracting other students to a town ripe with prospects for standalone higher education facilities? “We’re spoilt for choice with beautiful old buildings – orphanages, monasteries, former schools and hospitals,” says Skidmore, UC’s pro vice-chancellor for major projects. UC has already taken out an option on a Goulburn property in the hope that its SAF bid proves successful. The campus would include accommodation and teaching facilities for 50 residential and 100 non residential health and community studies, business, IT and cultural heritage students. Goulburn Mulwaree Council is hot to trot. “It has a proactive mayor and general manager – they’re bending over backwards to help us,” Skidmore says. So is Monaro MP Steve Whan, who’s secured UC its choice of crown land at Cooma. “They’re very keen to have development in this part of the state,” says Skidmore. Cooma campus would have an initial intake of 30 residential and 60 non-residential sport and recreation, tourism, education, building and construction management students. It could stretch to engineering if additional investment is forthcoming. For now, the donated land has enabled UC to cap the cost of this campus at $6.4 million. The SAF bid, which was lodged jointly with Illawarra Institute of TAFE, would also see partnerships established with capital region VET providers. It would also cover the refurbishment and enlargement of UC’s Jervis Bay field school for applied ecology and indigenous studies. UNSW: A marriage made in Kensington UNSW and CSU occupy different patches, in more ways than one. UNSW is within sight of the Sydney coastline while CSU is spread across inland centres. And the two institutions don’t teach the same things either, with UNSW’s law, medicine and fine arts a nice fit for CSU’s justice studies, allied health and creative industries. “CSU and UNSW are ideally matched with a complementary mix of disciplines,” a UNSW spokesperson says. UNSW’s SAF bid would finance its NSW Universities Student Targeted Approach to Regional Teaching (NUSTART) proposal, ramping up the existing collaboration with CSU and ultimately extending to other higher education providers. Students could insert a few UNSW units in programs delivered by CSU, or vice-versa. They could undertake collaboratively developed degrees delivered by either or both institutions. Or they could complete CSU programs and undertake further study at UNSW, ending up with UNSW awards, under a “2+2 model”. The $30 million project would include curriculum renewal and pathways development. Business processes, physical plant and communications and learning platform technologies would all need to be adapted. But “it would reduce the need to duplicate institutional infrastructure”, UNSW points out. UB: An untapped market The Victorian government’s training guarantee is about encouraging students to train at higher levels – ideally diploma or advanced diploma. The federal government’s targets are about degrees. When the University of Ballarat examined census and state government data, it found lots of people who’d accepted one challenge but not the other – 67,000 regional Victorians and outer western Melburnians who’d obtained diplomas or advanced diplomas, and stopped there. That “untapped market” is capable of increasing UB’s equivalent full-time enrolments by 1000 – a quarter of its current domestic undergraduate load – by 2016, the modelling revealed. UB’s $31.4 million Victorian Regional University Dual-Sector Partnership (DSP) – with $21.4 million financed by the SAF – would enable it to offer its applied degrees at all six regional TAFE institutes. Diplomas and advanced diplomas – which form the first and second years of the three-year programs – could be topped up with a third year of higher education, supplied by UB at “DSP points of presence” at the TAFEs. TAFEs would retain their autonomy “in all key operational matters outside DSP commitments”, a project summary says. This represents a “significant point of difference from other Victorian higher education providers”, it says, because it offers a fully articulated pathway within TAFE campuses. This keeps qualified workers in their local communities, notes vice-chancellor David Battersby. “The opportunity for us to work with standalone TAFEs, to deliver these programs to people working in regional communities, is a major incentive for those folk to stay and live there. “One of the important by-products of all this will be to build capacity within standalone TAFE institutes, value-adding to the sorts of things they do,” he adds. Battersby says that if there are already 67,000 potential customers in regional and outer metropolitan Victoria, there’s bound to be more elsewhere. “What we’ve proposed to the federal government is a scaleable model. If you’re doing this in Victoria, why wouldn’t there be an opportunity across the nation?” Related stories SAF applications show TAFEs could be victims or victors Nerves fray as ‘caps-off’ approaches New campuses?