In the university’s own words, and that of community heads across Northern Tasmania, the transformation of the Inveresk and Burnie campuses is the most ambitious, transformative and once-in-a-generation investment opportunity to achieve enduring renewal of North and North-West Tasmania.
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The project will involve the investment of $300 million, of which $260 million will be spent on the Launceston-based campus.
The project aims is to boost higher levels of education participation with a focus on industry and workforce needs.
In Launceston’s case, it is a chance for the redevelopment and expansion of an inner city campus to revive the CBD.
The strategy is not new and universities in regional cities across Australia like Geelong, Ballarat, Wollongong and Newcastle provide successful examples of how they have become economic catalysts for communities.
Geelong and Launceston are both the second largest cities in their state and have been forced to grapple with a depressed economy through industrial changes over the past decade.
The Committee for Geelong was established in 2001 to contemporise the city and its board is made up of members from broad-ranging business and educational interests.
The committee will be involved in a revitalisation of the city centre which follows the transformation of its dilapidated waterfront by Deakin University into a university campus.
Committee for Geelong chief executive Rebecca Casson said the university had just invested in inner city housing to bring more students into central Geelong.
She said Geelong had built itself up to offer the broadest range of tertiary educational and university pathway offerings per capita than any other Australian regional city.
Ms Casson said the city had a collective of internationally focused education institutions outside the university to draw lucrative international student numbers, from primary school to the highest levels of educational attainment.
“It’s fair to say that a university can act as an economic catalyst but it’s not the only part of success for a city but there has to be further collaboration,” she said.
“What we’re looking at now is how Victoria’s second largest city can transform through not just having a university investing, developing and attracting more people to our city.”
Launceston Mayor Albert van Zetten said the council was looking at Federation University Australia’s inner city presence in Ballarat, as well as Geelong’s example, to guide Launceston’s project.
"We're exploring industry parks, which Ballarat has employed in its outer campus, and centres of excellence for areas of study and research,” he said.
"We want more people participating in higher education, whether it's associate degrees directly related to industry demand, or traditional degree courses.
“We want to attract international students to realise the economic boost from that, as well as create research centres that are themed around the skillsets unique to the university, such as the Australian Maritime College.”
International students were worth $164 million to the Tasmanian economy in 2014-15, up from $153 million the year before, according to Deloitte Access Economics.
It is estimated that international education supported 1474 full-time equivalent Tasmanian employees in 2014-15.
Cr van Zetten said Launceston had the opportunity to tie an inner city campus in with the Launceston City Heart Project, which aims to modernise the city’s centre as a retail, cultural and business hub.
“Through the redevelopment of public space infrastructure and enhanced support for events and business capability, we can seek to attract future private investment and to ensure there is always activity in our streets and public spaces,” he said.
Earlier this year, seven Northern Tasmanian mayors wrote to the Premier and Prime Minister urging them to financially support the university transformation project.
They wrote:
"Northern Tasmania is struggling.
“Despite increasing tourism numbers and some sectoral growth, we continue to lag behind the state and nation for unemployment, investment and education amongst other important indicators.
"The Launceston university relocation and education transformation project offers a truly once in a generation opportunity to underpin the future prosperity of the North of Tasmania.
"Our children and our workforces are not getting the education they need to find jobs, to develop in their jobs, or to support themselves and their industry employers to compete in an increasingly global market place.
"We are being rapidly left behind and no matter how much improved our infrastructure is in the region, if we can’t provide our young people with the promise of participating in an ever-changing technical world that requires a reasonable education and pathways to further specialisation – we are likely to continue to struggle and place an extra burden on the welfare system and other related issues such as health and petty crime.”
Northern Tasmania Development executive officer Maree Tetlow said she was pleased that the plea from the Northern leaders resonated with the major political parties during the election to the extent that they both pledged $150 million in federal funds towards the project.
“(The project) will provide not only a phase of construction jobs for up to a decade but will also send a strong message to our community about the value of education,” she said.
“Education is not only for our young people gaining qualification, but also for lifelong learning and skills renewal of mature-aged students and workers.
“We need to become a ‘clever’ region with innovation and learning at the core of what we do.”
