Content
Another huge growth surge ahead
14 November 2009
When reviewing data in the mid 1990’s ahead of USC opening, I was struck by the Sunshine Coast having some of the worst statistics in the State on the participation rates in higher education.
Since the University has opened the data have improved and now the Sunshine Coast is second only to Brisbane, with 21 percent of 16-49 year olds in higher education, and now ahead of both the Gold Coast and outer Brisbane local government areas.
In terms of student numbers, USC has grown from 500 to 7000.
But the growth momentum continues, with early QTAC figures indicating a 20 percent increase in applications for 2010. Translated into numbers that means nearly 8000 people have so far expressed preferences for USC, and importantly, over 6500 are first preferences.
Students are quite clearly voting with their feet to participate in higher education at USC. The data are compelling.
The bigger challenges with this rate of growth in a broader range of programs, is on the one hand providing the physical facilities for teaching and research, and on the other hand to deal with the waxing and waning of student interest in specific disciplines, which of course in turn creates staffing problems.
When we opened the University, Business was by far the most popular area for intending students. Now it is the growth of Science, Health and Education that is outstripping the other faculties. The lurches in student preferences between disciplines from one year to the next can exceed 30 percent or more and yet staff understandably want greater security and predictability in workload allocation. The student-driven system ahead, however, will increasingly determine where the dollars go, as dollars will follow student choices.
As for the physical facilities, the Capital Operations team will be working hard across the Christmas-New Year period to increase teaching space capacity. In addition, it is the time of year when we have to do some capital maintenance, especially for the Library in this period.
All of this growth is also placing pressure on Graduation planning for April. It is now a huge planning exercise and over 3000 people are likely to attend both an indoor and televised outdoor event, to cater for the demand.
The single Graduation Ceremony which has been so successful across our early years in both celebrating academic achievement as well as unifying a regional community, will almost certainly have to progress to two ceremonies per year in the near future.
From preferences, to participation rates, to graduates gaining annually great successes, the figures, the stories and the associated quality placements locally and nationally become annually more impressive.
Professor Paul Thomas AM is Vice-Chancellor and President at the University of the Sunshine Coast.