Western Sydney is Australia’s epicentre of growth and opportunity with a burgeoning population of 2.7 million people and a booming demand for higher education, says Western Sydney University (WSU) vice-chancellor Professor George Williams. Two-thirds of the Western Sydney University’s students are the first in their families to have taken the plunge into higher education. “We know education is the enabler of mobility in our society, and it is the ticket to a better life, prosperity for your family, and for the community,” Williams says. “One in two of our students speak a language other than English at home. We have the largest number of low SES (socio-economic status) students in the country.”
He sees accelerating growth across the region, driven by a growing population, new light rail transport links, planned Metro connections, and the Western Sydney airport currently on track to begin operations next year. He thinks the new airport will “supercharge” Western Sydney’s growth – “that’s a once in a century investment”.
“We’re absolutely just at the beginning of that acceleration, if we get it right,” he adds. “It’s going to be a quite a remarkable decade. The rise of the West, I think, is what we’re seeing here now.”
Western Sydney University has campuses spread across the region – in Bankstown City, Campbelltown, Hawkesbury, Liverpool, Parramatta South, Parramatta City, and Penrith – along with clinical schools and research sites.
“We have a lot to cover,” says Williams, who was appointed as the university’s vice-chancellor in May last year. “Western Sydney is a place of enormous opportunity, but also where social mobility is at a premium and higher education is the most effective way of getting ahead into these jobs.”
Multiple campuses can be challenging because the big distances in Western Sydney add to the logistics costs, he says, adding that WSU has a mandate to service the broader Western Sydney community. “We are the anchor institution of Western Sydney,” he says. “We need to be comprehensive. When you’ve got such a large population, such enormous growth, it means that you need a campus network, as opposed to a single location.”
Several universities have a presence, small or large, in Western Sydney – most offer online spaces for study for those students who find it difficult to study at home. The Australian Catholic University has a campus in Blacktown, with purpose-built teaching and learning facilities including nursing labs, bed simulation wards, a moot court and a science lab. The University of Wollongong is in Liverpool, offering teaching, nursing, social work, business and law and IT.
The University of New England (UNE) established its first site in a historic building in Parramatta 12 years ago, and a second site, also in Parramatta, has just been refurbished to provide new teaching venues and a nursing lab.
“We chose Western Sydney because we could see the growth that was happening there,” says UNE’s director of campuses, Sue-Ellen Hogan. “We could see industry developing there and the population was growing to the west as well. So we knew it was a place where we could continue to build, continue to grow, and connect with industry.”
A large proportion of UNE students take courses online and Hogan says as well as providing on-site teaching, it is important to provide an on-line space with face-to-face support where it is convenient for students to study, where they can connect with other students, academics and the services of the university. The university’s first Western Sydney site is in a historic building in Parramatta.
“Most of our students are already in the workforce working full-time or part-time and they have families as well,” she adds. “We’ve always had extended study hours at our spaces in in Parramatta, so they can get support, or they can just come in and study to have that space away from home or away from work that they can dedicate to study.”
The university’s second site, also in Parramatta, has teaching spaces and a nursing lab, and offers business, IT and computing courses as well. “So we’re really focusing on those new technologies as well as business skills and development,” Hogan says.
The University of NSW has a presence in Western Sydney, in Parramatta and in Liverpool. As with all the higher education institutions in the region, the aim is to encourage as many residents as possible into higher education by reducing or eliminating the perceived barriers.
The university will later this year open a new suburban study hub in Liverpool, part of a federal government-funded scheme to increase access to higher education. Dr Zoe Terpening, the UNSW pro vice-chancellor (precincts), says the study hub will offer a pathway into higher education for would-be students, and provide computer access – in an area where she says about a third of students simply don’t have the digital devices needed to study at home.
The university has been in Liverpool for more than 35 years, Terpening adds. “South-west Sydney has a growing population that’s bigger than Canberra, so there’s a huge number of people who have big aspirations, but there’s often a lot of barriers to higher education,” she says.
A UNSW MedTech Entrepreneurship Changemakers Program has been operating in Liverpool for the last 12 months and it has proved remarkably popular, Terpening says.
“The barriers for access to for entrepreneurs in south-west Sydney are often very basic,” she says, adding these might include transportation difficulties and lack of free time in business hours. “So we responded to that need by embedding something locally in Liverpool. It’s been hugely successful. I think we’ve had more than 560 changemakers, as we call them, through that program.”
Terpening says that for UNSW, Western Sydney isn’t simply a matter of physical expansion. “It’s actually about the inclusivity and access to world class education and fostering innovation in in a region that’s important to Australia’s future, and all students from all of the universities, and those universities working in partnership, will be needed to deliver on that,” she says.
For his part, Western Sydney University vice-chancellor George Williams says the university sees collaborations and industry partnerships as vital to provide university students with solid avenues into gainful employment. “We need industry partnerships to support our students,” he says. “We need internships. We need opportunities during university to develop great career paths.”
Western Sydney University has particular strengths in various disciplines, including in health, medicine and allied health, Williams adds. Engineering is another focal point, with advanced manufacturing of critical importance to the development of the West Sydney economy, and the more traditional fields of law and business essential in the region. The creative arts, too, are essential in a functioning democratic society and he says WSU is now considering reopening its drama program.
It’s important for Western Sydney University to ensure that it provides comprehensive study options, Williams says. “The breadth of interest is enormous, and we can’t afford not to serve that,” he adds. “That’s our social licence. We need to be the university the community needs and deserves.”
Financial Review