Page 3518 - Week 08 - Thursday, 18 August 2011
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Opposition members interjecting—
MR SPEAKER: Order, thank you. Mr Hargreaves has the floor.
MR HARGREAVES: Twenty-five seconds and the rabble turn up! Good on you. I just thought I would wake you up, because quite clearly you have had a good lunch.
MR SPEAKER: The question.
MR HARGREAVES: You know, we’ve been down to VIP for our lunch, and everything’s cool.
Mr Speaker, would the minister please advise what advice he has received in relation to the future of the tertiary education sector, both nationally and locally?
MR BARR: I thank Mr Hargreaves for the question and for his interest in the future of tertiary education in the territory. I think as members are aware, the tertiary education landscape changes dramatically from 1 January next year. In fact, there is change already occurring across the sector in Australia. The new world of tertiary education will be much more demand driven, letting students study the courses they want at the institutions that they choose. This will undoubtedly lead to more competition and institutions looking to break into new markets to take a larger share of student enrolments.
The central piece of advice from the architect of the national education reform, Professor Denise Bradley, is really to forget about what we currently know about the country’s tertiary education sector. It will become unrecognisable. Governments and institutions across the country are implementing change to prepare themselves for this new world. Universities are currently over enrolling to insulate themselves against the shortfall in new students once the demand-driven model takes effect.
I can advise members that the Queensland government has just announced the merger of the Central Queensland University and the Central Queensland Institute of TAFE into a new dual-sector university. Now it is the significance of changes such as this that led me to ask Professor Bradley to advise on the changes that we would need to make locally to ensure that both the University of Canberra and the Canberra Institute of Technology can compete and, indeed, grow in this new education world.
Professor Bradley delivered her advice on options for future collaborations between the CIT and the University of Canberra two weeks ago. The report is available on the Education and Training Directorate website and feedback can be provided to the government until 23 September.
It is important to note that Professor Bradley recognises that both the University of Canberra and the CIT are good quality, reputable institutions that perform reasonably in the current climate. But her report also finds that neither the CIT nor the University of Canberra have sufficient scale or mass to effectively compete in the new demand-driven world.
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