An artist’s impression of the two buildings. Image: Hassel.
The new UNSW Canberra City campus will aim to carve out a unique niche in the ACT’s tertiary education sector to meet skills gaps, but complement, not compete, with existing university offerings.
Work has begun on Stage 1 of the city campus, with a sod-turning ceremony on Monday (20 October) marking the milestone.
UNSW Canberra has already moved into the former CIT premises in Reid, with the inaugural cohort studying a Bachelor of Cyber Security.
Stage 1 will consist of two connected six-storey buildings, facilities, shops, underground parking and grounds on a section of the carpark opposite.
It is expected to be completed in the first half of 2028, with the next stage to follow a year or so after. Eventually, the new campus will cater to 6000 students and transform the eastern end of the city.
Located at the corner of Constitution Avenue and Coranderrk Street in Parkes, the new precinct will deliver education, research and innovation in critical areas such as defence, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, digital engineering, advanced manufacturing, climate and public policy.
UNSW Canberra will leverage its existing relationships with the military and national security and plans to play a bigger role in Canberra’s innovation sector, expanding its startup program.
Vice-Chancellor Professor Attila Brungs said UNSW planned to bring its engineering expertise and focus on startup culture to Canberra and partner with CIT, the University of Canberra and ANU to help create the skilled workforce that the ACT and the nation needed.
He said this would build on UNSW Canberra’s Launch innovation ecosystem, which currently includes 27 collaborators and 350 co-located staff.
“We’ve been doing this for a while with Launch, we’ve got a whole lot of startups already, particularly in the security and defence areas, but what this site enables us to do is put in a lot of the physical infrastructure that many of the startups, of course, can’t afford,” he said.
Chief Minister Andrew Barr leads the sod turning. Photo: Ian Bushnell.
Thousands more students in the ACT will need somewhere to live.
Professor Brungs said the amount of student housing in the ACT was adequate for now, but UNSW Canberra had plans for on and off-site accommodation.
“We have on the drawing boards some purpose-built student accommodation that we can literally turn on a dial and start putting up as soon as we think that there is a need for that,” he said.
Chief Minister Andrew Barr said there was a slight oversupply in student accommodation, but with this new campus, and ANU and UC given the nod to increase places, more would be needed.
Mr Barr said that on his recent trip to Thailand and Singapore, he had told major student housing investors with a presence in the Australian market about the opportunities in the national capital.
He said a 700-bed development had just been proposed in Dickson, and there could be opportunities to repurpose office buildings in the city or build new housing on these sites.
The ACT Government has been a big backer of the UNSW Canberra development, providing the land for a peppercorn rate and $25 million in support.
Mr Barr said the dividend for the ACT would be jobs, tens of millions of export income every year, and activity in a part of the city that was sparsely populated.
“The benefit of having graduates who emerge from UNSW Canberra into our economy with skills that we need, that we know the Australian Government needs, that we know employers in this region need,” he said.
“Whilst the students are here, we have the wonderful benefit of their diverse cultures and experiences to enrich our city, to make Canberra even more diverse, and a more interesting place for people to both study and to live.
“There is no downside to this at all.”
An aerial view of the project.
Mr Barr said that next year the government, along with the universities, would be out selling studying in Canberra to overseas markets.
“Part of the task for next year, working with each institution, is looking at the international markets that they want to focus on, and the ACT Government, through Study Canberra and our international engagement focus, will work hand in hand with each university, either bespoke or as a collective to sell studying in Canberra,” he said.
But given UNSW Canberra’s links to national security and defence, where international students are sourced is a question that will need to be addressed.
Mr Barr said prospective students would need to be eligible to participate in those courses.
“We have a number of international partners for whom we have very strong and close collaborative relations on national security and defence-related matters,” he said.
“It’s not just those areas that we would seek students from overseas to study at UNSW or indeed any of the higher education institutions, so we’ll tailor our approach to market, commensurate with all of the appropriate rules and regulations, visa issuing requirements.”
Mr Barr said the new campus would complement other developments in the city, such as the Lyric Theatre and the nearby National Convention and Entertainment Precinct.
“It’s going to make a massive difference to the number of people utilising our city centre,” he said.
“That’s got to be good for all of the small businesses in the CBD as well.”
Canberra firm Construction Control was announced as the contractor for the project.
