Australian Technology Network of unis in alliance with China group
The Australian Technology Network of universities has formed an alliance with a counterpart group in China.
The Australian Technology Network of universities has formed an alliance with a counterpart group in China to conduct staff exchanges, student movements and research collaboration.
The new relationship is with the Excellence 9 League of Universities, known as the E9, which represents institutions with strength in engineering.
ATN executive director Renee Hindmarsh said the new alliance recognised “the world-class reputation Australia’s technology universities have for producing work-ready graduates and real-world research”.
“Almost a quarter of Australia’s engineering students attend ATN universities,” she said.
“Students are at the heart of everything we do, and deepening our relationship with China and the E9 universities will pave the way for a strategic collaboration to meet future challenges.”
News of the alliance comes at a helpful time for the ATN, which last month lost one of its five members, making it the smallest of the main university groupings.
Queensland University of Technology announced on September 28 that it was pulling out of the group, joining 11 other public universities that belong to no major grouping.
New vice-chancellor Margaret Sheil, who arrived at the university early this year, said it was an amicable parting that was taking place as QUT developed its new strategic plan.
“The long relationship between QUT and ATN has been very productive; however, we have evolved with a different direction and policy priorities,” she said.
ATN was formed out of the universities that were formerly institutes of technology.
Its membership now comprises UTS, RMIT, the University of South Australia and Curtin University.
The group will face another membership challenge if the University of SA goes ahead with its proposed merger with the University of Adelaide, a Group of Eight university.
It is not clear which group such a merged institution would belong to, but it may see benefits in being part of the research-intensive Go8.
The other main university groupings are the seven-strong Innovative Research Universities and the six-strong Regional Universities Network.
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