Overall, the Regional Universities Network is pleased with what Mary O’Kane and her Accord colleagues have proposed in their Interim Report. “Regional communities hoping for a major reform of Australia’s city-centric higher education ecosystem can be encouraged by key ideas,” is RUN’s overall response.
The lobby specifies ideas it approves of and is pleased with, “consideration given to RUN’s proposal to establish a universal service obligation based on the principle that all Australians should enjoy the same access to higher education as a fundamental right.”
But there is one RUN does not mention, a second national university, based in the regions.
A National Regional University, “with a distinctive institutional and educational model shaped by Australian geography, would be an important opportunity to create a planned approach to our national-regional education footprint,” the Accord report states.
“It could support high-quality regional education, offer a growing range of opportunities to students from regional communities, and deliver excellence in regional research.”
“It would have a strong regional voice and through its campuses would retain its important local community identity.”
It’s an idea that Accord panel member Fiona Nash is well placed to consider. Ms Nash is the Commonwealth Regional Education Commissioner and a former Charles Sturt U advisor on regional development. Prior to that she was a Nationals Senator for NSW and cabinet minister.
While the Accord puts a new national uni for Australia on the agenda, it makes plain that not all in regional universities are signed on to the idea.
“Stakeholders have noted the deep connections forged between the existing regional universities and their local communities, and that students may prefer a choice of different universities within the regional footprint.”
Not to mention, existing regional uni staff and state and federal MPs keen to be friends with institutions that are always important drivers of local economies.
Plus, people who remember the last time mergers were tried, notably the less-than-happy network created from the University of New England, the neighbouring Armidale College of Advanced Education, the Northern Rivers CAE at Lismore and Orange Agriculture College.
People at UNE and Lismore did not get along and the network was dissolved.
