"Whose responsibility is it to get Tasmanians into higher education?" the leaders asked themselves.

Too few Tasmanians go on to tertiary education, and vice-chancellor Peter Rathjen says it's about 15,000 too few, compared with South Australia.

"We'd never thought maybe it's our job to go out and say 'these kids need to get an education and we've got to find out how to give them one'," Professor Rathjen said.

"We decided it was our job - we're the only university here and we need to do something about it."

Professor Rathjen said for the first time, the university's main focus was on tackling Tasmania's tertiary education rates.

He believes there are 35,000 people in Tasmania who would be engaged in tertiary education if they lived in another state.

Key to his plan is normalising university education by putting it front and centre of each Tasmanian city, and attracting students through new associate degrees.

The short, intensive degrees are designed to make higher education cheaper and more practical.

"We will get costs of degrees down and strengthen regional campuses to ensure students can study from home," he said.

"No one else in Australia has ever done this."

His other goal is to make Tasmanians understand why university is important.

"For us it's obvious, for them it's not," he said.

"We want it so that people come in, and then they can take a decision to get the associate degree, or carry the credit into a bachelor program at the university."

The degrees would run for 40 weeks a year instead of 26 weeks, and involve industry placements.

"After a year they'll see the world differently and will be a different person," he said.

"After a few years people will enrol straight into bachelor degrees, but we've got to take the first step."

A pilot program could be up and running by the end of the year, or early 2017.

"A two-year degree in agribusiness can take you straight out and into running your farm better, or it could lead you to a degree in agriculture or business or science," Professor Rathjen said.

UTAS plans to base the vocationally-aligned degrees in Launceston.

"The place we can have the most impact economically is Launceston," he said.

"For us, it's a gift to those communities."

The plans have received criticism from some that UTAS was trying to "dumb down" degrees or scale down its presence in Launceston through the move to Inveresk.

"Our biggest fear is that the community somehow stops this happening," Professor Rathjen said.

"We're not trying to dumb anything down or shrink anything.

"The reason for Launceston is very simple - we think it is the depressed economy that needs the benefit of those extra students within the town."

He said if the student base could be built up in Launceston, the university's intention was to offer more courses.

"We're a business, people don't get that, we're not government funded - we get paid if we get students."

Professor Rathjen said his vision was to see large numbers of students enrol in the associate degrees and increased enrolments in bachelor degrees and PhDs.

In the past few years in Launceston, UTAS has hired 37 new professors and increased PhD students by about 50 per cent.

The goal is to attract 10,000 more students to the Launceston campus.

"Inveresk is easily big enough to cope with all that," Professor Rathjen said.

Infrastructure Australia has listed a science precinct in the Hobart city as a priority project.

The Launceston City Council has raised concerns that Launceston may miss out on funding if Hobart is prioritised.

But Professor Rathjen said it was positive that the body had determined that higher education was the best investment in Tasmania.

The move to Inveresk is central to UTAS's plan to attract more people into university.

"In Melbourne you only have to walk five minutes before you run into a big university sign outside a building and students walking around branded with university stuff," he said.

"Education is everywhere and all around you - we don't have that culture down here.

"The middle of Launceston is the sort of place kids should see university from the start of their life and right through."

Professor Rathjen said Newnham was probably the only campus in Australia that had not received federal investment over the past few decades.

"We don't think we're going to be able to persuade anyone to invest there, but we know we can persuade people to help us build a purpose-built campus that is attractive to students and in the right location," he said.

"It will expand the opportunity down here, which is what everyone wants to do."

Professor Rathjen believes federal funding would flow for the move because it would drive participation and help the local economy.

"I spend a lot of time working out what makes the best cities in the world, and I do think without exception they always have a university in the middle of them," he said.

"You want coffee shops with people sitting around in them having ideas - that's what we'd like to see in central Launceston."

A business case for the move will be released by the state government in a matter of weeks.

It will include plans for an institute like the Menzies and Institute of Marine and Antarctic Studies buildings in Hobart, to be based at the Willis Street car park site.

Professor Rathjen said it could be known as the 'Launceston Institute'.

"The broad concept is that we think the future of the Launceston economy will be based on applied science," he said.

The institute would house research for areas such as agriculture, defence and manufacturing.

Professor Rathjen said the museum would stay where it was.

"There's a lot of interesting things you can do together," he said.