Welcome

Australian higher education is entering a new era. The scale of change is the most significant since the Dawkins’ reforms of the 1980s, which will be familiar to many of our alumni and have benefited many more.

Those reforms led to an overall expansion of the higher education system, moving further from the elite system that had prevailed until the early 1970s by opening higher education up to more, albeit mostly middle-class, Australians. This was necessary because of the changing nature of the workforce and for equity reasons.

Coinciding with the arrival of the internet, these policies changed the nature of universities in very important ways. As a university that serves a whole population, the University of Tasmania mirrored the national changes in a single university, becoming a lot larger with multiple locations and teaching students from a much wider age group, including many who are mature age, and studying part time and online.

For the current reforms, the government has once again looked forward at what the nation’s needs are in a process that has led to what is called the Australian Universities Accord. That work identified by 2050, 80 per cent of all jobs will require tertiary education. Already today 9 out 10 new jobs require it. In practice that means 90 per cent of students will need to go on to university or TAFE.

Effectively, we are moving to a universal higher education system in which moving from secondary school to higher education will be as typical as the transition from primary to secondary school.

The only way this will occur is through expansion of higher education for regional and lower SES students. This is important in Tasmania given how regional the State is and that approximately 45 per cent of people are in the bottom SES quartile.

Appropriate support will be required to ensure these students succeed in their studies and needs-based funding, like that proposed by the Gonski review for schools, will ensure that is available.

These are ambitious, necessary, and far-reaching reforms – touching our schools, TAFEs, and universities – all with the shared mission of creating a more prosperous, inclusive, safe and healthy society for Australia.

As the only university based in Tasmania, we embrace these reforms which support so well our mission to make a positive difference for Tasmania and, from here, the world.

In doing so, we will continue to be a university that values education, inquiry and creativity for their own sake. Quality and excellence will also remain as hallmarks, and we will continue to have high entrance standards for our bachelor degrees, with expansion enabled by government funding of pre-university programs that will help students to meet those standards. We will continue to educate most of the Tasmanians who choose to go to university and, as that number expands, we will become even more involved in community life and nearly all of Tasmania’s jobs and workplaces.

To do this well, we must also continue to evolve and change, as we have throughout our history. A university like ours, so closely enmeshed with the place we serve, cannot do otherwise.

So too, you will witness a new generation of fellow graduates contributing to the changing face of Tasmania and the world, adding to the outstanding work of our current alumni, some of which is featured in these pages.

As this new era unfolds, your ongoing engagement and connection with the University will be of deep importance and is very much valued.

▶ For the third year running, the University has been rated as the number one university in the world on climate action in The Times Higher Education Impact Rankings. (L-R) Researchers Dr Emily Flies and Dr Chloe Lucas with Professor Rufus Black.

Photo: Peter W Allen