Commentary by Professor Debra Dunstan, UNE Director of Place-based Education and Research
In 2021, UNE is re-committing to being 'place-based'.
It is an outlook that looks forward while reaching back to UNE's roots. The belief that education should be shaped to 'place' provided the energy that built UNE and its precursor, the New England University College.
Now we are again fully owning our role as Australia's first regional university, 'of the regions, for the regions', while extending the concept to how we service online students in their physical places.
On a first encounter, the term 'place-based' might seem to be another meaningless piece of jargon. In the spirit of 'show, don't tell', here's an example of a place-based initiative:
Tamworth has a plan. It wants to swell its population from 43,000 to 100,000 by 2041. To do that, it needs to swell its economy. That requires skilled, trained people. For all its enviable energy, Tamworth has a challenge here: levels of education attainment in the Local Government Area are below the national average. For instance, Year 12 completion rates in Tamworth (36%) lags behind NSW (52%) and Australia (52%).
UNE, as part of its commitment to Tamworth, has listened to the city's local government and industry and started to develop a program of education integrated into the needs of this specific place.
Tamworth's growth project doesn't require the friction of traditional three-year degrees. It wants its people to have access to flexible, stackable qualifications, and it wants its employers to have input into the design of those degrees so that they are relevant to Tamworth workplaces.
One place-based response from UNE has been the rapid development of several specialist additions to the Undergraduate Certificate in Professional Development.
Tamworth is an events city. It annually hosts about 1.1 million visitors who travel to the Country Music Festival, the Australian Equine and Livestock Events Centre, sporting events and conferences.
The Undergraduate Certificate in Professional Development (Event Management) was designed in consultation with Tamworth events managers to provide students with the skills necessary to run events, while also introducing them to the skills and processes necessary to succeed in higher education.
The Certificate counts towards further study, making it a rung on the ladder to a full degree for those who may never have contemplated going to university.
A newly-developed optional unit within the Certificate, Work 100, gives students the opportunity to undertake 40 hours of work-based learning as part of their qualification, allowing them to better understand the workplace while testing the skills they are learning online.
Three other Tamworth-centric Undergraduate Certificate specialisations have been developed on similar principles: Community Welfare and Wellbeing, Equine Management, and Business Studies.
University traditionalists may deplore this vocational approach to higher education, but that would be to miss the point. Low-friction qualifications like these are a gateway to higher learning for people who might otherwise never have considered university study. They can provide a sense of agency in the lives of people otherwise buffeted by the winds of a callous job market. It is achieving what UNE was established to achieve: to bring the power of higher education to the regions.
Nor does a place-based approach sideline UNE students who live outside the region – which is most of them.
In the 21st Century, the virtual world has become a place, one distinct from geographically-defined places. UNE is investing in a core digital delivery platform that recognises the opportunities and costs of studying virtually. By removing the technical barriers to synchronous online engagement between students and teachers, the platform promises to open up conversation and support authentic assessment of learning in ways currently not possible.
The virtual space then becomes a no-compromise communal place for learning while students and lecturers remain in-place – the best expression so far of the distance learning ideal launched by UNE in 1954.
For decades, university education has been guided by space-based policies. We only have to lift certain market barriers, space-based thinking goes, and labour, wealth and opportunity will flow to wherever it is needed.
Space-based policy still has its place, but in much of what it does, UNE is returning to the specificities of place. That's where it can have the greatest positive influence; that's where UNE is at home.
