University of Wollongong deputy vice-chancellor (Global Strategy) Professor Alex Frino talked about Wollongong’s future at The Illawarra Connection this week. In the annual Hargrave lecture Prof Frino posed a question about whether the city was a university town. He produced a graph of 50 cities with universities in the United States and said the answer was no. Presently 7.5 per cent of our population is made up of university students but many places such as Cambridge have double that. “We are not a university town. But we can grow to be a university town. I think in the next couple of years or so the outlook for jobs and business in the Illawarra looks very promising. The increase for building approvals..in the last 12 months are at an all time high. It suggests a boom of sorts.” But looking further ahead Prof Frino said steel and manufacturing were still going to be big exporters and generators of income into the region but they were in decline. And as employment falls in those areas he suggests there is a positive and ambitious story that can be told in education. “The university is going from strength to strength. It generates reasonably large volumes of export income from students who flow on-shore not just for the university but for all the other goods and services that those students need.”
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Prof Frino said all the income the university generated it effectively spent in the region so “in a nutshell I believe and expanded and maturing education sector in the Illawarra underpinned by the university could provide the employment, business and fresh injections of money the region so desperately needs.”
But Prof Frino said it was not something the university could do alone. “It will require us, university and city, education and enterprise...supporting each other and working together.”
The Hargrave Lecture is traditionally presented by an eminent public figure with links to the Illawarra.
Immediately prior to returning to Wollongong the 2016 speaker was the Dean of the Graduate School of Management at Macquarie University and oversaw its rise in international business school rankings.
He has been the chief executive of the Capital Markets Cooperative Research Centre Limited and was the recipient of a prestigious Fullbright Senior Scholar Award from the US Government.
In 2015 he was the winner of the University of Wollongong Alumni Award for Research and Innovation.
Greg Ellis
Almost four decades in electronic, print and digital media. A writer, presenter, emcee, photographer and videographer with degrees in business management, marketing and human resources and tertiary qualifications in photography.
Almost four decades in electronic, print and digital media. A writer, presenter, emcee, photographer and videographer with degrees in business management, marketing and human resources and tertiary qualifications in photography.
