Federation U has a plan in place to enrol enough students to survive. Now VC Duncan Bentley wants to make it so important to its regions it will thrive.
In 2022, the dual-sector provider in regional Victoria was in such a state for enrolments that it proposed closing its arts degree. To which the National Tertiary Education Union responded, “we need an urgent intervention with emergency funding to save this key pillar of regional higher education.”
But as Vice-Chancellor Duncan Bentley argued in The Australian the other week, universities cannot keep asking for public money to do more of the same that isn’t working. But, he added, the state should stump up “for innovation that genuinely meets student needs.”
Fed U management has stage one of its innovation plan to do this in-place. It will need money from government and industry to implement stage two.
The university still has a traditional degree structure (there’s a BA) but students also integrate work and study via an industry partnership model for both higher education and TAFE streams. “Direct connection to employers, paid placements, career preparation and workplace skill development, supported by a leader in student support, skills development and social equity,” is the sell.
It’s too early to say whether Federation U’s Co-op Model will work with students and if industry will embed it in staffing, but the university had to do something to slow the flow of students out of its doors.
According to the strategy, making the university a magnet that not only holds locals but attracts students and industry funding from outside depends on just announced stage two, “high growth community partnerships to create education-to-job pipelines that boost attainment and drive regional development in key communities.”
The university wants $169m in four packages, one for each of the regions it serves, all emphasising training, technology and jobs.
Much of it is for standards , campus refurbs and capex but this is more than the standard National Party playbook, that government must support bush communities. The message is that universities are the best hope for the regions’ (and Berwick, which is hardly rural or remote, and is surrounded by suburbs full of students, but who ever let the golden prospects of one campus get in the way of an organisational pitch).
“Without clear investment in education-to-jobs pathways; economic stagnation and population decline puts local services and businesses under more pressure, communities face job-market misalignment, with local employment growth not keeping pace with workforce needs, increasing commuting costs and infrastructure strain growing place-based inequalities contribute to poorer health, mental health, wellbeing outcomes and fraying social cohesion.
And that’s the pitch – Fed U in each region, by each region and for each region. Whether their pitch is torpedoed or supercharged by the decision to send out a press release endorsing the Coalition’s international caps policies during the election campaign remains to be seen.
