A couple of weeks ago I rang Swinburne University to ask them whether they would reopen a campus at Lilydale if Labor won the election and the answer was a resounding ‘no’.
I asked how many courses had been transferred from the Lilydale campus to Hawthorn in the two years prior to them closing the campus and I couldn’t get a straight answer.
I am aware that many of the more popular courses were shifted during that time.
When I asked how many face-to-face full-time students there were at the Lilydale campus, I was told that full time student contact hours were calculated by a complex formula that included online students and that online studies were very profitable.
Swinburne University fought tooth and nail not to come to the outer east.
Swinburne begrudgingly opened a campus in the outer east and, when the Labor Government removed the requirement for them to maintain a university campus out here, they took every opportunity to reduce enrolments and hasten its closure.
Sophie Wajsman,
Montrose.