University of Australia Online: a vision for a better educated Australia

In 1999, the ALP commissioned a detailed report on the workforce of the future. Released in February last year, the Workforce 2010 study forecast that 40% of the new jobs of the next decade will go to people with bachelor degrees or higher qualifications. If Australia is to secure the future jobs, we need to increase access to university.

Workforce 2010 stresses the importance of investing in education, training and innovation as the key to reducing structural unemployment. The Coalition government, which tries to portray itself as a good economic manager, is actually threatening major damage to Australia’s future by continuing to treat investment in skills as a drain on the budget. Its recent "Innovation Statement" largely consisted of reinstating measures which it had axed, and putting back some of the funding it had previously cut.

A Beazley Labor Government will give the highest priority to making Australia a Knowledge Nation. Labor will increase substantially the national government’s investment in education, training and research. We will provide more opportunities for Australians to participate in the skills development our country needs to manage and benefit from technological change.

We have already announced policies to double the number of research fellowships and to introduce a new category of elite fellowships.

Labor’s Vision

In January this year at the National Press Club, Kim Beazley announced that Labor would establish the University of Australia Online (UAO).

We have two goals for the UAO:

• to make Australia a world leader in online education; and
• to have 100,000 Australian undergraduate students studying through the UAO by 2010.

HECS fees will be halved for online study, encouraging students to enrol for online courses.

Universities will be encouraged to offer online courses by funding a Content Development Program to assist with the high upfront development costs and providing a new payment to existing universities for each undergraduate Australian online student.

Some have incorrectly assumed the University of Australia Online will be a new "bricks and mortar" university. It is more an institution which will be a gateway or portal to the 38 existing public universities which will design and deliver most courses.

Students will be able to obtain online degrees from the primary provider university while also having access to online units at other universities through the UAO.

For Australia it means we can market every participating university's online courses to overseas students through the University of Australia Online brand.

The UAO will also have a Quality Assurance Board to ensure that high-quality standards are maintained.

Online study does not mean cheap and low quality. Online study does not mean simply putting the lecturer's notes on the Internet.

Some Australian universities are already offering high-quality, online courses, most for postgraduate study. The best of these encourage critical thinking by maximising student interaction with lecturers, tutors and fellow students.

Most also include some face-to-face component, like many traditional correspondence or distance education courses.

We expect many students who enrol through the UAO will be mature age or second-chance students.

Thousands of Australians are currently denied a university education because they cannot afford to give up three years of paid work or because they do not live in university towns or cities.

The UAO will give them the education opportunities they deserve.

Being able to study when you want, where you want, will open up opportunities for parents who are raising children at home, for working families who cannot afford to lose an income for three years, and for people in regional Australia who cannot afford to travel to or live on campus.

Most universities offer bridging or pathways programs to encourage people over 25, who may not have a TER score, to consider studying at university.

The UAO will offer these pathways programs free of charge to encourage as many people as possible to consider improving their education.

The UAO is not just about improving access to tertiary study for Australians, important though that is.

It's not just about enrolling overseas students online, as welcome as those export dollars will be.

It's about Australia leveraging its advantages in distance education and software design into a new high value industry.

Australia has several comparative advantages in designing and delivering online education:

• we are the world leader in distance education;
• we have a reputation for offering high quality education services;
• we have the advantage of speaking English;
• we have many citizens who speak other languages; and
• we have excellent skills at software and multimedia design.

A key part of the Content Development Program will be to encourage collaboration between universities and to encourage participation by private-sector companies in individual projects similar to the operation of Cooperative Research Centres.

The intellectual property created and the revenue earned will be shared. To gain access to the new Commonwealth funding, universities must agree to allow the UAO to offer the units they participate in developing to other eligible students – with royalties flowing back to the creators.

This will ensure the UAO will offer students a wide range of high-quality Australian online courses.

This approach will encourage both collaboration and competition between universities to develop high-quality units and courses and will ensure that there is always pressure to keep the online units up to date in both content and design.

The UAO will play a key role in improving access to the education and skills needed by Australians in the next decade and beyond, as well as helping to broaden educational opportunities for the social and cultural benefits they bring to individuals and the nation.