Victoria University expands into Queensland

A new Brisbane building has turned heads and there is a quirky explanation behind it all.

From the outside, it’s your average inner-city Brisbane office block, but this building is home to Queensland’s newest university campus that takes a different approach to learning.

Victoria University’s Fortitude Valley campus officially opened on Friday and is already home to 100 international students mainly studying Business and IT courses.

The campus has been up and running for little more than three months, with students from 11 countries – but mainly India, Nepal and Sri Lanka.

It is modelled on VU’s Sydney campus which has continued to grow over 15 years. Both VU campuses are run in partnership with the Education Centre of Australia.

Victoria University’s Brisbane campus at 269 Wickham St, Fortitude Valley. Photo: Supplied.

The Brisbane campus occupies three levels of the corporate building housing a mixture of teaching spaces, computer labs, and training support. VU provides all academic content and marking, while ECA covers job placements and training and general support for students.

Victoria University vice-chancellor Adam Shoemaker said it was the education provider’s first teaching presence in Queensland and had been two years in the making.

“We had the first discussions in the depths of the pandemic, we were looking for alternatives when it finally ended. We were looking at where everyone was moving during the pandemic, you couldn’t look past the Queensland state capital,” Professor Shoemaker said.

“Brisbane is at a most fascinating time in its development, particularly nine years out from the 2032 Olympics.”

Looking forward, VU hopes to expand to 1000 students from up to 25 countries by 2023, with potential new courses including teaching and early childhood education, as well as sports science to coincide with the Olympics.

VU has a different, but award-winning, teaching style – the VU Block Model.

“Instead of the traditional three or four subjects at once for 12 weeks for exams at the end of the semester, we do one subject at a time intensively for four weeks,” Prof Shoemaker said.

“Once that subject is done, students have a one-week break, then they start a new subject. They can do up to 10 subjects per year and there are no more than 30 students per class.”

Last year, VU announced it was making about 300 full-time academic and administrative staff redundant after posting a $73.2 million deficit.

Prof Shoemaker said it had been a tough year, but stressed most Victorian and Queensland universities also recorded losses which he said “is the hangover of the pandemic”.

“We’re sticking to our strategy and working to perfect it, we’re engaging with the best possible partners, and we’re trying to be innovative in our approaches. The best way to respond to a setback is to reposition fast, and that is what I believe we have done,” he said.