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Amalgamated Council - University partnership essential
19 January 2008
I hope that with the new amalgamated Council there will be a complete recognition of how important this university is to the future of this region. Where such recognition has occurred elsewhere in the world, partnerships have been struck, and investments made in projects that have had a profound effect on those regions.
Innovative businesses have developed in Scandinavia on a huge scale in the last few decades, and Spain is emerging as a high growth area for innovative business at present, and all these developments have been based on impressive, visionary partnerships between business, governments and universities.
Across our first decade we have been caught between competing responsibilities of different shires. Whilst we were unquestionably established to be a regional university, servicing the needs of our region with meagre initial resources, the help extended to our Canadian, British, Hong Kong, Singapore and U.S. universities from local governments was not approximated here on the Sunshine Coast. Maroochy felt university support was a regional responsibility, whilst Noosa and Caloundra felt the university was Maroochy’s responsibility.
When we opened we were even hit with a punitive headworks demand for 20 percent of our opening budget – or the university would not be allowed to open. Even though we were, and remain, a non-profit organisation, we had to pay the $400,000.
Diplomatically and economically that was an inappropriate way to develop a relationship and benefit a region.
Now, over a decade has elapsed, and USC is emerging as one of the most promising universities of Australia’s twenty-first century. There has never been a more important period in the Coast’s short history, for a strategic alliance to be struck between a new region and its own, still relatively new University.
I hope we learn from the past mistakes and delays, and commit to address the future needs of the region collaboratively, in a strong partnership.
The University’s talent pool is growing monthly. Its professorial fire-power is becoming impressive. Its annual regional contribution is nearing $200 million, nearly half of the total contribution of the education sector to the Gross Regional Product of the Coast.
An active and committed partnership is overdue, and the future of the Region is too important to delay further.
Professor Paul Thomas AM is Vice-Chancellor at the University of the Sunshine Coast.