Adelaide University to open new campus in Melbourne’s Docklands
The University of Adelaide is moving into Victoria in an expansion leaders hope will bring new students, research opportunities and cash into the SA institution.
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Adelaide University will open a campus in Melbourne and aims to have up to 800 students there within five years.
The uni’s first interstate campus in its 146-year history, expected to attract mostly international students at first, is designed to be a money spinner that will help boost research funding for Adelaide-based academics.
Opening in July, the campus will be in the Docklands district next to the Melbourne CBD.
All 11 degrees in the initial offering relate to business and information technology.
The announcement comes after The Advertiser revealed in July that the uni planned to open small campuses in eastern states cities to capitalise on their greater population growth and appeal.
The campus will be run in partnership with international education company Kaplan, in Kaplan’s Docklands building. The company will do the teaching while the uni will retain control of course content and assessment.
Vice-chancellor Peter Rathjen told The Advertiser some international students wanted an Adelaide University degree because of the specific content offered, but preferred to live in “a big cosmopolitan city like Melbourne”.
He said some international students wanted to be based in cities with large local populations from their national background. That would make a Melbourne campus particularly attractive to Sri Lankans.
And as domestic students were reluctant to leave their home cities for uni, it would also attract Melburnians who would otherwise not consider Adelaide University, he said.
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Prof Rathjen said the course offerings would expand over time into areas of the uni’s particular strengths, such as wine business and artificial intelligence. Course content would be the same whether students were in Adelaide or Melbourne.
Prof Rathjen said investment details were “commercial in confidence” but the uni had “no significant financial exposure” in the new campus, which he was sure would be profitable. The intake in July is expected to be 150-200 students. Courses include commerce, accounting, corporate finance, IT and computing.