“The new university college category recognises high-quality institutions and opportunities to develop course offerings that meet the future needs of students, employers, industry and communities. The updated standards also include augmented research requirements for universities,” Professor Coaldrake said.
Avondale’s vice-chancellor Kevin Petrie said the decision was recognition of the college’s reputation and standing in the education community.
“Based at Lake Macquarie, we feel we could be the local university not just for school leavers but for mature-age students. We have a distinct market and our own characteristics that will draw students to us because of the nature of what we are,” Professor Petrie said.
Those characteristics included small class sizes and a tight-knit community, he said.
Under Australian higher education standards, the term university is tightly protected to ensure it is not used by businesses, companies or domain names that might appear to be a university but in fact are not.
To be called a university, institutions must also conduct world-class research in at least three distinct areas. Professor Petrie said Avondale was building research expertise in Christian education, spirituality and society, and health and wellbeing.
Liz Hughes, chief executive of NIDA, said it had been a big week after being named among the top 25 drama schools in the world, and the only one outside the US and UK.
“This is –an organisation that has really moved with the times,” Ms Hughes said. “We’ve been around for 60 years and it’s kind of amazing the way NIDA keeps being relevant and vital to industry.”
Being named a university college was recognition of NIDA’s practice-based training, and its relevance to the arts and cultural community of Australia.
“The benefits are definitely reputational and it will enable greater research and scholarship as well. It’s very encouraging to see the quality of art education represented in this new category. The development of artists and storytellers [of] the future is really critical,” Ms Hughes said.
Professor Coaldrake said while there were at the moment no tangible benefits – such as access to government funding under the Commonwealth Grants Scheme – in becoming a university college, the category was “recognition that excellence is not seen through one lens only and shouldn’t be seen through one prism alone”.
“Scholarship embraces notions of discovery, integration, application and reflection. The university and all that long debate around that. And that encourages high performance,” he said.
