A new university alliance has been formed, underscoring the extent of the challenges – and potentially also the opportunities – facing the higher education sector.
The Innovative Research Universities (IRU) group has been replaced by a new Alliance, the '2050 Alliance,' which adds two additional members to the IRU line up – Australian Catholic University (ACU) and Victoria University (VU) – and re-orients the new group with a clear focus on the challenges of the Accord.
Education Minister Jason Clare will launch the new group at the University of Canberra today. He said the new Alliance would help focus effort on achieving improved university completions from outer suburbs and regional Australia.
“The Universities Accord sets an ambitious target for 80% of the workforce to have a tertiary qualification by 2050,” Mr Clare said.
“2050 Alliance Universities are going to do a lot of heavy lifting in getting us there.”
Paul Harris, the CEO of the new Alliance, said that the new Alliance would preserve some key resources and submissions created by the IRU, but would have a broader group of universities engaged in key questions relating to achieving the outcomes proposed in the Accord.
“In the past few years, the IRU have teamed up with other groups and tried to build a coalition on key issues, so I think that is the next stage in this work,” Mr Harris said.
Alliance Chair and Western Sydney University Vice-Chancellor George Williams said that it was an opportune time to cement a new network of universities in response to massive sectoral change.
“We are in the middle of the biggest transformation in our higher education system since the 1980s,” Professor Williams said.
“There is no time to waste – the decisions we make today will determine whether we meet our 2050 goals. The time is right for universities to come together with a clear focus on the public good – serving our students and communities, and helping to deliver on major national priorities including intergenerational equity and productivity growth.”
The group consists of ACU, Flinders, Griffith, James Cook, La Trobe, Murdoch, Canberra, Victoria and Western Sydney universities.
Mr Harris said there would be opportunities to expand the Alliance further in future, if sufficient common ground was found.
“Through the work we have done over the past years, the door is open and we will keep talking to others about other opportunities for collaboration,” Mr Harris said.
“We think things like needs based funding are positive for our system and want to help implement that. I think all of our members are connected by a shared optimism and a desire to work together on the big issues into the future.”