Future Campus

17/06/2025

Merlin Crossley looks at the significance and potential value of the rankings that we hate to love, despite the flaws in methodology and attributed meaning - sneak peek from tomorrow's Future Campus.

The newsletter will be published slightly later tomorrow, so that we can bring you the THE Impact rankings as they are revealed tomorrow at 9am AEST, fresh for your consumption.

11/06/2025

23/05/2025

To celebrate our first two years as a publication, the Future Campus team have introduced an updated logo, reflecting the focus on news, analysis and events with a fresh perspective.

While the logo is new and functional, our core goals and brand remain the same – creating spaces for conversations and commentary which you won’t find elsewhere – the publication that is proudly independent, produced by the sector and for the sector.

Read more: https://loom.ly/UjfFd3k

To celebrate our first two years as a publication, the Future Campus team have introduced an updated logo, reflecting the focus...

23/05/2025

A conference focusing on marketing, communications, recruitment, advancement and strategy will be held by Future Campus on 17-18 September 2025, hosted by Deakin University’s Downtown campus in Melbourne.

HE FEST 2025 will feature marketing, communications and philanthropy tracks as well as plenary sessions providing insights into major issues facing the sector.

We are announcing speakers progressively, and have already locked in some seriously fascinating speakers guaranteed to bring fresh perspectives to the event.

As part of the conference, we will also be presenting the 2025 Future Campus Awards in seven categories:
• Best University Marketing campaign 2025
• Best University Communications campaign 2025
• Best University Recruitment initiative 2025
• Best University Fundraising campaign 2025
• Best Low Budget campaign 2025
• Best Application of Technology in Advancement 2025
• Best Agency Partnership 2025

Applications for the awards and Early Bird Conference tickets open today. We will present further information in relation to the conference and awards in coming issues.

Visit www.hefest.com.au for more information and for tickets.

16/05/2025

Join Peter Høj and David Lloyd as they explain what is happening with insights relevant to every university at 2pm AEST on Wednesday 21 May – brought to you free of charge by Future Campus.

The vice-chancellors of the imminently-ending Uni Adelaide and Uni SA talk to Stephen Matchett and Tim Winkler about one of the most extraordinary higher education adventures in a generation.

After a decade of off and on argument about a huge public university in South Australia, the State is a bare six months from the launch of one of the biggest single HE reforms since John Dawkins created a mass HE system.

Whether the new Adelaide U will attract many, many more international students, as Premier Peter Malinauskas expects, is unknown. So is, whether it will be too big and too slow, as critics warn.

What we do know is that Høj and Lloyd have got Adelaide U to the starters’ gate.

In this Zoom discussion we will ask them;
• can a plan based on attracting more internationals deliver in the new era of quotas
• will the new uni have one, two or even three research strategies
• are staff from the two predecessors on a “unity ticket” for Uni Adelaide to succeed
• are existing students going to notice
• will the new university be ready to go from January 1
• are staff from the two predecessors on a “unity ticket” for Uni Adelaide to succeed
• does the SA community get what is happening
• what they got right from the start of the process and what took a little longer
• this will be a hard act to follow – so what are their next tricks?

Join us to hear what they have to say about what must have been the time of their working lives.

𝗥𝗲𝗴𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗻𝗼𝘄: https://loom.ly/VuXsuKM

07/05/2025

What does it take to create a new university? And what can we learn for the future of HE?

Join Professor David Lloyd and Professor Peter Høj, Co-Vice Chancellors of the newly formed Adelaide University, as they share firsthand lessons and bold insights on higher ed transformation.

Wednesday, May 21st | 2:00pm – 3:00pm AEST
𝗥𝗲𝗴𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗻𝗼𝘄: https://loom.ly/VuXsuKM

05/05/2025

Goodbye punitive-level caps and hello ATEC – oh and yes we see you there JRG, you’ve been at the back of the room all the time, and while both parties hoped we would forget you, you know we can’t.

The victory of Anthony Albanese’s Government has ensured the devil you know retains the reins for the sector, but with expectation that Jason Clare may be elevated to a portfolio more befitting a consummate spruiker, shifting to an area the public actually care about, many expect a new face in the Education Minister departmental mugshot in the week to come.

The election provided confirmation that higher education had about as much social licence as a MAGA acolyte at an integrity seminar. HE got plenty of mentions, but only in the context of tough talk on immigration or relief from oppressive debt. Although Trumpet of Patriots did manage to annoy legions of voters with the promise to double fees for foreign students and provide free education for Australians – with the election results clearly demonstrating the plausibility of that math.

Research on the other hand, that area so important to the Government that they haven’t bothered measuring research performance nationally for seven years, did not appear to register a micro blip on the election radar.

So where to from here?

Read more: https://loom.ly/invBSCA

Goodbye punitive-level caps and hello ATEC – oh and yes we see you there JRG, you’ve been at the back of the room all...

12/03/2025

Transplanting Australian curriculum into offshore destinations and hoping it catches on is not a strong recipe for success in Trans National Education (TNE), according to Deakin University Vice-Chancellor Professor Iain Martin.

In our latest instalment of Future Campus TV, Professor Martin explains how the University came to establish its latest offshore campus in Bandung, Indonesia, in a collaboration with Lancaster University and Navitas.

“If we believe that this is important … then simply saying lets look at standard approaches I think we will get very sterile very quickly,” Professor Martin said.

“The traditional models are there but they are not necessarily the models that will see us through to the future.

“We need to find different ways of delivering what works for different student cohorts and new student cohorts.”

Watch the full interview - 5 Minutes on TNE at:
https://loom.ly/xtA2zEs

05/03/2025

The business model of universities did not sit well with Australians – drawing on international student fees to cross subsidise research. Professor Frank Bongiorno from ANU told the Future Campus Brand Australia 2025 conference.

“If you asked most parents what they would see as the core business of the university it would basically about educating domestic undergrad students, but as we know universities do a whole lot of other important things, they are an important part of civil society,” he said.

03/03/2025

𝐄𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐢𝐥𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞

Indigenous priorities appeared to have been allocated a back seat by society and by the HE sector since the defeat of the Voice referendum, University of Canberra Pro Vice-Chancellor (Indigenous Leadership) Maree Meredith told the Future Campus Brand Australia 2025 Conference.

“Since the referendum there’s silence and again there’s silence with the Accord so what we are asking for is our priorities to still be at the table,” Professor Meredith said.

“What we did ask for in the Accord is an Indigenous-led review; we are still yet to see movement on that.”

Professor Meredith said the sector couldn’t assume that it was doing good work, without building close relationships with the people it claimed to impact.

“How do we know that we are doing good work?” Professor Meredith asked.

“We need to step into the space where we are not in the university bubble, we need to be at the interface.

“When it comes to social licence, we can’t be doing it without our own people,”

03/03/2025

I find it a little bit arrogant for us as universities going out and telling the public we matter,” Deputy Vice-Chancellor Research and Innovation at the University of Newcastle Professor Zee Upton told the Future Campus Brand Australia 2025 conference.

“We need the public to be talking about us, so the university telling the public you’ve got it wrong we really are important really doesn’t cut it, particularly in this time where this is a current cost of living challenges.

“There is outrage at the moment over VC salaries, there is outrage over housing affordability and there is outrage over the fact that their children can’t get loans for their houses without the HECS being counted.

Professor Upton said rather than telling people that universities should matter to them, we should be encouraging industry partners and collaborators to tell the story.

“We have to step up and start focusing on the things that are important to the nation.”

28/02/2025

Universities have become ‘academic supermarkets’ where students pay substantial fees, typically work part-time to cope with the cost of living and have higher expectations of what they get in return for their fees, Australian journalism icon Michelle Grattan told the Future Campus Brand Australia 2025 conference.

“Universities have changed over the decades quite dramatically … Institutions are on notice because their students are consumers as much as learners,” she said.

“At the same time Governments have become much more interventionist with universities, they are critical of them at multiple levels.”

“In general, you’ve had this great transformation of the sector and how it’s regarded and that has made it more difficult to have and maintain its social licence”.