Council lobbies Australia’s university to set up local campus

FAIRFIELD City Council is keen to lobby universities around Australia to set up a campus in the local government area.

There are calls for a university campus to be based in Fairfield.

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EVERY university in Australia could receive a letter from Fairfield City Council as support builds for a local university campus.

At last week’s meeting, Councillor Paul Azzo asked Mayor Frank Carbone if the council could write to every university in Australia, asking them to consider establishing a university campus in Fairfield.

Fairfield would like to encourage a university to be based in the city.

“Liverpool was able to secure a university campus in its city and it’s time for our city to do the same,” Cr Azzo said.

The Fairfield Advance has previously reported Fairfield has the least number of tertiary-educated residents in Sydney.

More than 60 per cent of residents have no tertiary qualifications of any kind — degrees, diplomas or vocational training — according to 2011 Census data.

Councillor Paul Azzo: time a university was based in the city.

It is also the only Sydney area where the number of university-educated students falls below 10 per cent of the population, at just 9.2 per cent.

As Western Sydney University and Wollongong University expand rapidly across western Sydney, Fairfield remains the last western Sydney city without a university campus.

Neither WSU nor UOW have any immediate plans to open campuses in the Fairfield area.