CIT enrolments firm in new market

CIT chief executive Adrian Marron said first semester enrolments had fallen by just under 1 per cent but CIT was expecting to make up the shortfall in the second semester to hold steady at about 23,000 students.

Under a new national policy of uncapped university places recommended by the Bradley Review of Australian Higher Education and fully implemented at the start of this year, both the UC and ANU have expanded their intake.

Mr Marron said the results could have been ''much worse'' for the CIT in terms of losing students to universities - potentially costing it as much as 6 per cent of its enrolment share.

''That would have been a worse-case scenario,'' he said. ''Instead it is gratifying the CIT has been able to maintain its service to the community in these times of fierce competition.''

International student numbers were down by 50 students on last year, to 1350. But Mr Marron said 79 students who had been accepted had had visa delays and most of those were coming through in second semester.

''We set our targets this year to hold onto the same number of students as last year and we could be slightly above that. Our international performance is well above the national average given some quite significant drops across the VET sector in the other states,'' Mr Marron said.

Meanwhile, a separate Bradley review last year of the UC and CIT may mean changes to governance for the CIT as it seeks greater autonomy from the ACT government.

While Emeritus Professor Denise Bradley recommended last year that the two institutions merge, CIT and the Australian Education Union largely resisted the merger and it was rejected by the ACT government.

Professor Bradley's fall-back recommendation was to decrease CIT reliance on the ACT government - a suggestion ACT Chief Minister Katy Gallagher said yesterday would be her preference for the future.

With the CIT embroiled in claims of a pervasive bullying culture and subject to investigations by both WorkSafe ACT and the ACT Commissioner for Public Administration, Ms Gallagher said the industrial issues needed to be thoroughly addressed before any governance reforms were introduced.

But an ACT Treasury report - prepared last year during the Bradley review deliberations - suggested CIT could save $7 million in taxpayer funding a year through greater autonomy. The savings would be made through course consolidation, rationalising staff costs, reducing duplication and restructuring management.

Ms Gallagher said such changes would not be simple to navigate.

''We would like to see the CIT become more independent, more transparent and more accountable.

''But it will still require public money, and need to meet public expectations as a training provider.''

Ms Gallagher said the CIT also had a vital role catering to disadvantaged students, students with disabilities and those from non-English speaking backgrounds. ''CIT will always have to deliver on a social equity level even while it becomes more competitive,'' she said.

Mr Marron said greater autonomy would ''come through degrees of devolution rather than one big change''.

CIT was working on remodelling the structure of its governance board, procurement processes and financial management, although Mr Marron said no changes were imminent. ''We are doing work on demonstrating how we could benefit from a degree of devolution rather than autonomy - a word that tends to polarise people.

''We are increasingly being drawn into more a market domain but we operate under a public service model, so we are looking at how we can move forward in a more competitive way.''