We have much to be proud of over the last 39 years, and more recently over the last ten years, but we also face real challenges not least massification (growth of student numbers). This might be the biggest challenge for us in the long run, ironically considering we are facing a short term drop in numbers, due to the half cohort. But in general we are in good shape: we have doubled our turnover in five years, have a considerable asset base and are not solely reliant upon one or two income streams as we have return on our other investments.
We also have the fortune to be sitting opposite the biggest public development project in Western Australia: the $2 billion investment Fiona Stanley Hospital provides us with many L&T opportunities for the staff that will be working there.
But it is also clear that the education landscape is shifting. While education globally is worth an incredible 4.4 trillion, planned government deregulation will bring other corporate and university institutions easily into our market and, while the numbers of global learners are growing considerably, there are more and more opportunities to learn online and via other delivery modes. We need to be able to compete in this environment, and to do so we need to revisit our core Murdoch Ethos and ensure that open access, interdiscipinarity and high quality educational content are at the heart of our future planning.
Our L&T strategy is being developed in concert with our colleagues, and through this collective intelligence and data gathering process, we aim to produce a solid implementation plan that will be rolled out over the next five years. We will need to invest in our Learning and Teaching spaces and have already committed $7 million to that end. We also need to invest in our staff in order that we can provide the best learning experience we can for the next generations of learners coming proudly into our university in Perth, Singapore and Dubai, as well as via flexible online and blended modes of learning.
Digital Education 