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Private education provider Kaplan and the University of Adelaide plan to establish a fourth international university in Adelaide to help disadvantaged, isolated and working adults complete a degree. From 2011, students will be able to study at the Adelaide campus in Grenfell Street or online throughout Australia.

Financial services and business programs will be initially offered, ranging from bachelors to masters degrees. The university is expected to have 5000 Adelaide based students with many more enrolled online.

The contract is expected to be finalised next year, with the first intake of students expected in 2011.

Bill Clinton's university to open in Adelaide in 2012

Political Reporter Sarah Martin From: The Advertiser June 14, 2011 12:00AM


A NEW international university slated for Adelaide and affiliated with Bill Clinton will attract up to 3000 students.

It's slated to boost the state economy by up to $1.8 billion, and The Advertiser understands the university wants to start teaching in South Australia by next year, with plans for more than 3000 enrolled students within 10 years.

Adelaide has been chosen as the preferred location for the International University of Australia, and its application for accredited status is now being considered by the State Government.

Public comment on the proposal is expected to be called for this week, the first step in it being approved by the State Government.

The university will be the Asia Pacific focus of Laureate International Education, a US-based university network that is seeking to establish an Australian presence.

Former US president Bill Clinton is the honorary chancellor of Laureate, which has more than 50 accredited universities and more than 600,000 students globally.

Sources say that after two years of planning and research, Adelaide was chosen above interstate rivals because of its growth in the education sector, its relative affordability and recent accolade as one of the world's most livable cities.

It wants to have 50 per cent of enrolments from the Australian market, with the other 50 per cent from Europe, Latin America and Asia.

If approved by the State Government, the new institution will require an Act of Parliament to achieve university status.

The International University of Australia would be the first new university in SA since the University of South Australia was accredited in 1991.

In the past 20 years, only four universities have been established in Australia.

The Advertiser has been told the university wants to begin teaching about 100 students in 2012, building up to a campus of up to 3000 students by 2022. It will initially rent premises in the CBD, but intends to build a purpose-built facility five to 10 years later.

The university will have a focus on professional courses such as design, high-end hospitality management, health sciences and allied health. International study will be an obligatory component offered at the university, with students able to tap into Laureate's overseas network.

Sources say several CBD locations have been considered by Laureate, but until the university is approved, no deals can be signed.

A study, which will be released along with the call for public comment, is set to reveal that between 2012 and 2020, the new institution would add between $1.6 and $1.8 billion to the state's economy.

Minister for Further Education Jack Snelling said: "Laureate have applied for approval to be registered to be a university in South Australia. This is currently going through an approval process which does include a public consultation period."

Global Laureate International Universities targets Adelaide

* Andrew Trounson
* From: The Australian
* June 15, 2011 12:00AM

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher- ... 6075202086

US-BASED Laureate International Universities is pushing to set up in Adelaide the first new Australian university in more than a decade with a high-end pitch for those prepared to pay for it.

The global for-profit Laureate, which boasts former US president Bill Clinton as honorary chancellor, is betting that there will be enough students willing to pay full fees of about $80,000 for their degrees to make its target of 3500 students by 2022 viable.

The International University of Australia, as it will be known, is aiming for an equal student mix between domestic and international. It claims that it will be able to offer student-staff ratios of less than 15:1 compared with ratios at public universities that have blown out to more than 20:1.

In courting the South Australian government, Laureate cites commissioned research that the project would deliver a $1.8 billion boost to the state's economic activity between 2012 and 2020, generating about 550 jobs.

But there is some scepticism that Laureate can make its plans work given the small scale. That scepticism follows slow student growth at US-based Carnegie Mellon's Adelaide operations despite generous state funding and the closure of British-based Cranfield's Adelaide office.

But Laureate's plans are more ambitious than other international universities and it is seeking to establish a fully fledged Australian private university that would meet all the government protocols for providing research and offering research degrees. Laureate isn't seeking government start-up funding, instead committing to support the campus itself until self-sufficient.

If approved, it would be the first new university in the country since the establishment of the public University of the Sunshine Coast in 1998.

It is the second time Laureate has sought to establish a campus in Australia. Last year it looked at setting up in Brisbane in an alliance with Southbank Institute of Technology.

Laureate said it had attracted a project team of former senior executives from within the Australian university sector.

A key attraction for Laureate is that having an Australian university would provide a quality benchmark for its expanding Asia-Pacific operations.

The initiative is being headed by Laureate's managing director of Asia-Pacific, Michael Mann, a former Australian ambassador to Laos and Vietnam. Dr Mann later joined RMIT, set up the university's two campuses in Vietnam and served as RMIT Vietnam president before joining Laureate at the end of 2008.

But higher education commentator and RMIT policy analyst Gavin Moodie said Laureate would struggle to attract students given the availability of HECS places at high-status public universities, which he said were also likely to have more pulling power for international students.

"I expect this development will be as underwhelming as all the previous attempts to establish Adelaide as the Boston of Australia," Dr Moodie said.

Laureate plans to start operations next year with about 100 students, initially offering bachelor degrees in design, hospitality management and global business and a masters in adult education and vocational education.

Laureate said it would offer above-average salaries to attract research staff from the outset and offer PhDs in design, hospitality and business. By 2016 it aims to have expanded to six broad fields of study.

It aims to attract PhD students by offering to employ them on salaried pre-doctoral academic positions as junior research fellows, including some teaching work.

Baltimore-based Laureate presently has a network of 55 campus-based and online universities across 28 countries with 600,000 students.

We need your help! If you are a resident of South Australia or a student, faculty or staff member of an institution in the Laureate International Universities network, we need your help to create the best and most representative name for our new university in Australia. On this page you will find a brief description of the character of the new university, the terms and conditions for participating in the contest and a form you can use to share your suggestion.
If we select your name, you will have a chance to attend a speech and meet the Honorary Chancellor of Laureate International Universities, President Bill Clinton.

US-based Laureate International Universities puts opening back at least a year

by: Education Editor Sheradyn Holder

From: AdelaideNow July 29, 2012 9:30PM

THE opening of Adelaide's newest university, by US-based Laureate International Universities, will be delayed by a year, until at least 2014.

The university network's Asia Pacific managing director Michael Mann confirmed the delay but said Laureate was still committed to opening the Adelaide campus as soon as possible.
"I'd like to say it's full steam ahead but it's going a little slower because of the process you need to go through for the necessary approvals," Mr Mann said.

"I don't think we can meet our initial 2013 goal. We intend to start teaching in Adelaide in early 2014."

Torrens University Australia, as it will be known, will be the nation's 40th university, and the third private university to establish itself in Australia (with other private overseas universities in Adelaide, such as Carnegie Mellon, represented by small schools).

Operated by Laureate Education, which boasts former US President Bill Clinton as its honorary chancellor, it intends to attract up to 3000 students within a decade of opening and boost the state economy by up to $1.8 billion.

Mr Mann said one of the main issues that had delayed its scheduled opening was difficulty in securing an appropriate site.

"The Torrens building (on Victoria Square) was going to be our office but we are looking for other buildings because we need a much larger space," he said.

He said finding a city site suitable for a university had not been easy and a building had to be secured in order to gain some of the necessary approvals.

Mr Mann said he hoped negotiations for a suitable site would soon be finalised.

He said he expected the university would be ready for an official launch, including revealing its logo, by the middle of next year.

It will deliver undergraduate and postgraduate programs to Australian and international students. It will initially offer four degrees - in design, hospitality, education and business.
Unlike Carnegie Mellon and University College London, it is not receiving any state government funding.

The Laureate universities network serves more than 675,000 students through 58 accredited universities, either on campus or online.