Engines For Regional Development

Sydney Morning Herald

Monday October 22, 2007

Gerard Sutton Professor Gerard Sutton is vice-chancellor of the University of Wollongong

REGIONAL universities have a unique and important role in Australia's higher-education sector. Unlike the experience overseas, where the oldest universities are often in regional centres (think Oxford and Cambridge in England, Glasgow and Aberdeen in Scotland, Heidelberg in Germany), Australia's oldest universities are in the state and territory capitals.

But many excellent institutions are working hard to create university cities outside the capitals - in Wollongong, Newcastle, Armidale, Bathurst, Lismore, Townsville, Toowoomba, Ballarat and Geelong.

These regional universities operate in areas that often lack the infrastructure advantages of the state and territory capitals, so must drive the provision of infrastructure that capital city universities take for granted, from high-tech communications links to scientific, artistic and sporting facilities. Inevitably, the rest of the community also benefits.

Clearly their core business is to provide opportunities for high-quality tertiary education, particularly for students from their regions, as well as valuable and relevant scientific and social research.

They are pivotal to the prosperity of regional Australia, collectively injecting billions of dollars into local economies through employment, consumption of goods and services and by attracting large numbers of students, all of whom need to be housed, clothed, fed, transported and entertained as well as educated.

A vibrant and successful university can make an incalculable contribution to a regional centre.

However, regional universities have a responsibility to provide much more by acting as catalysts for development in ways in which capital city universities need not and, often, could not match.

At the University of Wollongong, we see our role as being the engine to drive the economic, social and cultural development of our region. We have the capacity to generate increased employment and to attract new industries and investment, and a responsibility to utilise that capacity.

We are achieving that through projects such as the Wollongong innovation campus, under construction a few kilometres from the university's main campus. With support from the NSW and Federal governments, the university has committed $85 million to build the first four of more than 20 buildings in this research, development and commercial hub that will eventually employ up to 5000 people in knowledge economy jobs.

The university's graduate school of medicine also opened this year at the Wollongong and Shoalhaven campuses, with a clear focus on training general practitioners and specialists to work in regional, rural and remote areas of Australia where there is the greatest need for more doctors.

Wollongong University's contribution to its community is matched around regional Australia, where universities are fundamental to local economies and the social fabric.

But these economic and social benefits are the icing on the cake.

The most important responsibility regional universities have is to provide aspirational leadership through the pursuit of excellence in education, because it is only through education that socio-economic disadvantage in the regions can be removed.

Governments must continue to support these institutions to maintain their dual function, which is so important to national prosperity.

© 2007 Sydney Morning Herald

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