Education
The war for Hobart (and Tasmania’s) soul …
Prof Le Grew’s reasoning for wanting to relocate much of the university to downtown Hobart is fourfold.
Simply, he says it has grown too large for its suburban home of the 1960s and 70s, and local planning rules restrict higher and bigger buildings.
And with most of the existing facilities dilapidated and in need of a replacement — at a cost of $350 million-plus over the next few years — the uni boss believes UTAS needs to spread its wings geographically.
At the same time, the State Government’s abandonment of its ambitious plans for a new $1.6 billion Royal Hobart Hospital at the waterfront’s Macquarie Point, on the soon-to-be-vacated railyards and container depot site, has left seven hectares of publicly owned prime space invitingly empty, looking for a new chief occupant.
The Bartlett Government has said many times it is keen for its long-awaited docklands rejuvenation project around Sullivans Cove to be underpinned by major pubic institutions such as museums and places of learning.
Thirdly, the Macquarie Point site perfectly suits the joint dream of Prof Le Grew and Tasmanian innovations and visions guru Jonathan West, who wants Hobart to become more of a living and breathing university town.
Despite the university being the biggest employer in Tasmania after the state public service, and with its numbers of full and part-time students having swollen past the 25,000-mark, UTAS does not have a huge impact on Hobart life.
But professors Le Grew and West argue that with proportionally more university students in its population than in any other major city in Australia, there is no reason Hobart could not become a modern and buzzing “creative hub” of the future, akin to Oxford and Cambridge in the UK and Cambridge, Massachusetts in the USA.
The key, they explain, lies in relocating a substantial slice of the university to a purpose-built new campus on the docklands. It would also tie in neatly with reclaiming back the university’s original sandstone home on the nearby Domain.
But the final imperative behind the railyards move, about which Prof Le Grew does not mince his words, is social inclusion.
While the university remains hidden away in its affluent Sandy Bay enclave, surrounded by the homes of the wealthy and with one of Tasmania’s most elite private schools next door, Prof Le Grew boldly admits his uni is not appealing to all Hobartians.
Its location directly works against breaking down stereotypes and barriers about universities being lofty and inhibiting ivory towers of irrelevant learning, closed to all but the wealthy and educated.
Yet federal Education Minister Julia Gillard has made it abundantly clear that universities that do not improve the number of lower socio-economic students studying within their cloistered walls will soon miss out on future funding.
“To be blunt, while we remain at Sandy Bay, the further you go up the Derwent River the harder it is for people living there to see the university as part of their lives,” Prof Le Grew says.
“For most people living at Bridgewater, for example, Sandy Bay and the university are a universe away.”
Buoyed by the prospects of overseeing such an exciting project, repositioning UTAS physically and culturally, Prof Le Grew last month approached his “chairman of the board”, the university’s Chancellor Damian Bugg, to discuss his own future.
He hoped to find support for his desire to remain as the university’s chief for another three years.
But Mr Bugg, the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions until 2007 and UTAS Chancellor since late 2006, apparently knocked Prof Le Grew back.
So it was that a week ago last Friday, wearing his best poker face and with neither a grimace nor a grin to be seen, Prof Le Grew announced he would be quitting the university at the end of 2010.
He was vague about his future plans — understandable now in light of his hopes to have stayed on — and reluctant to detail why he had announced he was standing down so far ahead of his contract running out.
What is now apparent is that a clash between the visions and priorities of Prof Le Grew and those of his University Council board lay at the heart of his sudden resignation last week.
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The bigger problem of all for Hobart and the State Government of having deep rifts about financial and management strategies at the top of the University of Tasmania, is that its timing could not be worse.
The direction the university takes in the next decade, and the type of person appointed as Prof Le Grew’s successor, will be pivotal to how Hobart and Tasmania develops on so many fronts.
Think waterfront rejuvenation. Think creative cultures. Think architectural risk-taking.
Think of the need for innovative university courses backing massive food bowl and irrigation transformations. Think of climate change and the unique pivotal place of the University of Tasmania in marine, ocean and Antarctic studies.
Think broadband backbones and renewable energy revolutions and the need for university-educated professionals to help turn Tasmania’s heavy economic reliance on too few industrial players on its head.