‘No longer a failure if you drop out’: Adelaide Uni co-VCs

The mega-university’s degree overhaul shows how the traditional tertiary degree is changing.

Adelaide University co-vice-chancellors Peter Hoj, left, and David Lloyd. Picture: supplied

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The vice-chancellors who have ­piloted Adelaide’s new mega-university no longer want students dropping out of their degrees after one or two years to be viewed as failures.

Adelaide University – a merger between the University of Adelaide and the University of South Australia that opens to students in 2026 – will have exit points in all degrees, across every year level, so students who are unable or unwilling to complete a full degree still will receive a certificate or credential.

“This notion of being an unsuccessful exit, we’re trying to minimise that for the whole ­institution,” co-vice-chancellor David Lloyd tells The Australian, about what is expected to be the ­largest domestic educator in ­Australia.

The new model indicates how the traditional university degree is changing as institutions start to embrace shorter, stackable credentials.

It also provides a blueprint for how to implement the nationally recognised micro-credentials across the university, a key part of Jobs and Skills Australia’s reform agenda and the Australian Universities Accord.

“Often when people in the past interacted with a university and for some reason they didn’t complete … that would be seen as a failure,” co-vice-chancellor Peter Hoj says.

“We will say, if you have actually passed year one, we will give you a piece of paper saying you’ve gone to university and passed. And for many students that might be what gives them a job in another part of the economy.

“And they can, when they feel more financially secure for example, come back with that piece of paper and say, you know what, I’m ready to do the whole degree. Whereas if they left feeling that they had failed, they’ll never want to come back.

“So it’s not about lowering standards, it’s about upholding standards, but helping people achieve those standards with the appropriate input because basically that is what society needs – for more people to succeed and be master of their own destination, rather than being the recipient of other people’s largesse, including the taxpayers.”

Adelaide University co-vice-chancellors Peter Hoj, left, and David Lloyd.

After four years of development, Adelaide University will be handed over by Lloyd and Hoj to its new vice-chancellor, Nicola Phillips, the day after it opens on January 11.

The $2.1bn operation will have 70,000 students and 11,000 staff on the payroll.

The Universities Accord set an ambitious target to lift tertiary education attainment to 80 per cent of working-age people by 2050. Lloyd says the system will need to go the way of modular credentials across time.

“The notion that we’re going to see the level of attainment that’s in the accord, it won’t all be people with degrees,” Lloyd says. “It’ll be people with sub-bachelor qualifications. And we’re in a position to be able to support that attainment as well.”

Lloyd doesn’t expect it will lead to fewer people finishing their degrees but says it’s not the point anyway: “I don’t view that (the university’s role) is to qualify people with bachelor’s degrees or postgraduate degrees, it’s to provide higher education.”

At the top of the mission statement for the university is to “bridge the gap between intrinsic individual ability and perhaps suboptimal preparation through the schooling systems to succeed”, as Hoj puts it. “We want to create a university where you will succeed if you have the intrinsic capability, even though you might not have the preparation that is optimal for going to university, because South Australia is a state where we have a relatively low percentage of university attainment among school-leavers.”

One of the “front doors to the institution” still will be an internal college for those without an Australian Tertiary Admission Rank to enter areas such as health science, IT and education.

In some cases, the university will teach specialist subjects in first year rather than requiring those subjects as a prerequisite.

“It’s about recognising that there will be a large proportion of the population who, when given the opportunity, will get the requisite skills. But they didn’t even teach, perhaps, specialist math in the school, and we’re making up for that,” Hoj says.

With the merger of two universities, there also will be a larger spread of entry requirements.

Another important part of the vision of the university is to “withstand future shocks”. This includes not being “overexposed” to international students, with about 27 per cent of students being international students at opening.

“My view, and Peter’s view is there’s an appropriate, responsible balance,” Lloyd says.

“It’s about having, like, the right kind of number, which we feel is in that range of about one in three (international) students, at a steady state says that you’re having a global education experience in two directions.”