Universities collaborate to provide industry engineering programs

A new collaborative approach between four major universities will ensure continued delivery of world-class Petroleum Engineering programs in Australia.

Prompted by the loss of significant numbers of engineering academics returning to industry since 2007, Adelaide University, Curtin University, University of NSW and University of WA have proposed a comparable collaborative initiative in petroleum engineering (‘Petroleum Engineering Australia’).

This is followed by a similar approach undertaken in mining engineering; mining education also experienced more than a halving of graduate numbers, but responded with the collaborative Mining Education Australia (MEA) initiative – also involving four universities.

What does this mean?

This collaborative approach in delivering petroleum and mining engineering degrees means:

• An increase in academics for teaching.
• An increased ability to deliver world’s best courses.
• The ability to build stronger and consistent relationships with industry.
• Reduction per capita in teaching loads, creating more time for individual research (required for the Australian industry to remain abreast and ahead of global trends and innovations).
• Enhancement of inter-university academic relationships, leading to greater opportunities for research collaboration – for teachers and students.
• An increased geographic reach of a collaborative program – with the aim of attracting more local and international students and alleviating the significant skills gap in this area.

How will this work?
Each university provides two lectures to the other three universities, delivering a total of eight lectured units, which is the core of an engineering program.

Industry and government fund the development of the program and industry contributes to operating expenses.

The proposal is to commence with each university providing one lectured subject in 2011.