The University of Canberra will open a new campus in Sydney next year in a bid to grow its student intake beyond the capital.
The Sydney Hills campus in Castle Hill will host the first cohort of nursing students in 2023, but the university has plans to expand the course offering in coming years.
Executive dean of health Professor Michelle Lincoln said the new campus would fill a gap in the market while also helping the university expand its horizons.
"There isn't a higher education presence in north-west Sydney and so we saw an opportunity actually to fill a need," Professor Lincoln said.
"For University of Canberra, the size of the territory population means there's a limit on the number of students that we will have at Canberra at Bruce and so the university wants to grow our student numbers. And so we need to establish ourselves in other areas in order to do that."
The university already offers courses in creative industries and digital design in Queensland through a partnership with TAFE Queensland. The Sydney venture is different in that the campus is in its own building baring the University of Canberra branding.
It is the product of a partnership with the Education Centre of Australia, an organisation that specialises in services for international students.
The company has partnerships with Swinburne University of Technology, Victoria University and London Metropolitan University, but the University of Canberra deal is their first foray into nursing courses.
Education Centre of Australia was responsible for fitting out the new Castle Hill campus, while the University of Canberra was responsible for delivery of the curriculum and gaining accreditation for the degree, with a revenue sharing agreement in place between the two parties.
An existing building has been refurbished into a purpose-built higher education facility, complete with a library, computer labs, study spaces and clinical laboratories designed to mirror the wards at the University of Canberra hospital.
Sydney-based students will be able to do work placements in public and private hospitals in Sydney as well as rural placements in southern NSW.
Up to 60 bachelor of nursing students will be accepted in the first semester, with a combination of international and domestic students expected to enrol.
"It's good to start with a smaller number but we hope to build that really rapidly to meet that huge workforce needs coming in northwest Sydney," Professor Lincoln said.
"It's a growing area of Sydney and there's plans for a new public hospital in that area."
The students will follow the same curriculum and will do some of the same online learning as their peers in Bruce, but practical classes and tutorials will be delivered by academics in Sydney.
The new offering comes as Australia has a shortage of nurses.
Education providers saw an uptick in enrolments in nursing degrees in recent years after health careers were put in the spotlight during the pandemic and more school-leavers opted to go straight to education, rather than take gap years.
About 50 per cent of the nursing cohort at the Bruce campus are mature-aged students, but the faculty is unsure if this trend will continue in Sydney.
Professor Lincoln said successful nurses needed both sharp scientific thinking and high-level interpersonal communication skills.
"I think good nurses are smart and observant and able to blend that critical thinking, scientific thinking, with the interpersonal skills that we all want to we all want to experience from the nurse where we're not feeling well."
The university is planning to grow the course offerings into other areas of health and community services.
Next year work will begin on gaining accreditation for a bachelor of early childhood education at the Sydney Hills campus, with the aim of enrolling students in 2024.
Professor Lincoln said the new campus would not distract from the university's purpose of serving Canberra.
"The reality around the limits on growth here in Canberra means that there are things that we can't do that other universities can do because they're just bigger and they have more students," she said.
"The growth strategy will actually strengthen the University of Canberra for Canberra."
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