Canberra's aspiration to be recognised as a national centre of educational excellence is a step closer to fruition with this week's announcement talks are underway to establish a new University of NSW campus that could accommodate up to 10,000 students.
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Both the UNSW and the ACT Government deserve pats on the back for quietly getting on with scoping out the possibilities for the redevelopment of underutilised land at the Canberra Institute of Technology in Reid over recent months.
While the new campus, proposed for a 10 to 12 hectare site currently used for car parking, seems unlikely to be up and running before the end of the decade, a memorandum of understanding between the ACT Government and the university should be finalised by the end of the year.
Further details are expected to be released in 2018.
The plan, which has synergies with the light rail project which will ultimately link the proposed UNSW campus with the ANU, CIT, UOC and the east-west corridor, plays into an urban renewal strategy which it is hoped will bring an extra 20,000 people into the city over the next 10 years.
It will provide an eastern "bookend" to the redevelopment of the western side of the CBD undertaken by the Australian National University, in close co-operation with the ACT Government, over the past decade.
Agreements struck between the ACT Government and the ANU are expected to serve as the model for land use agreements with the UNSW.
While the UNSW has an association with Canberra that dates back half a century, first through RMC Duntroon and, since the 1980s, with the Australian Defence Force Academy, it has run out of room to expand its range of courses or to grow its student base.
The exciting news is that the university's Canberra rector, Michael Frater, has intimated that the new campus will target the technology sector with space and cyber security among the possible subject areas.
"The idea of this campus is to target markets other than Defence (its ADFA client) and areas underserviced in the higher education sector," he said.
This is welcome news given the urgent need for this city to broaden its economic base beyond dependence on public sector spending.
There have also been repeated calls by the business community for a commitment to developing a high technology cluster based around our numerous universities, companies such as Lockheed Martin and CEA Technologies and organisations such as the CSIRO.
The value of such a policy has been demonstrated over many years. International education is, as Chief Minister Andrew Barr pointed out on Tuesday, already the ACT's greatest export. There are an estimated 14,000 overseas students studying here.
Higher education provides about 16,000 local jobs and injects an estimated $2.7 billion into the Canberra economy.
With these runs already on the board it makes excellent sense to build on what has already been accomplished.
