The Australian Technology Network was formally established more than a decade ago; however our members share a history of 30 years of working together.
There is one ATN partner in each of the mainland capital cities: Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Curtin University of Technology in Perth, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in Melbourne, the University of South Australia in Adelaide and the University of Technology, Sydney.
All five ATN universities derive at least in part from former Institutes of Technology. Three (QUT, UniSA and UTS) also incorporated elements of former colleges of advanced education.
The ATN Universities share a long history of working in partnership with industry and the professions. In recent years they have consolidated their strong reputation for excellence in practice-based learning, flexible and online delivery and collaborative research.
The background of the ATN universities is reflected in the predominance of Business, Computing, Built Environment, Engineering and Nursing fields of study in their student load profiles. Furthermore, their size is reflected in the share of such fields nationally. Overall, the five institutions enrol around 20 per cent of Australian higher education load, including 28 per cent in Engineering and 45 per cent in Architecture and Building. ATN accounts for some 24 per cent of Australia’s international student load and 13 per cent of research student load.
Curtin University of Technology formally commenced in 1986, when the State
government of Western Australia passed the necessary legislation. This provided for the renaming of the
Western Australian Institute of Technology (WAIT) along with amendments to governance and nomenclature.
Essentially, however, Curtin was WAIT now designated as a university. WAIT was created in 1966 as a new
institution on a specially chosen site six kilometres south of the city of Perth. However, its nucleus
comprised the tertiary programs formerly conducted in the Perth Technical College opened in 1900.
In 1969 three more institutions were merged with WAIT: The Western Australian School of Mines
(originally opened in 1902), the Muresk Agricultural College (dating from 1926) and schools of
physiotherapy and occupational therapy in operation since the nineteen fifties.
The University of South Australia was established in 1991 with the amalgamation of
the South Australian Institute of Technology and the South Australian College of Advanced Education.
However it traces its history back to some of the earliest and most influential educational institutions
in South Australia, dating back to the nineteenth century. The University of South Australia Act was
established with a mission to preserve, extend and disseminate knowledge through teaching, research,
scholarship and consultancy, and to provide educational programs that will enhance the diverse cultural
life of the wider community.
RMIT University began as the Working Men’s College in Latrobe St, Melbourne,
Victoria, in 1887 and has also been known by a number of other names over the years. It was an immediate success. Its founder, Francis
Ormond, prominent grazier and philanthropist had predicted that if the college proved as successful as
similar institutions he had seen overseas some two or three hundred students would be attracted in its
first two years. In fact, by the end of 1887, nine hundred individual students had enrolled and by 1891
enrolments were running at about two thousand per term.
QUT is a leading Australian university with a colourful history dating back to the
beginning of technical and teacher education in Queensland when the Brisbane School of Arts was
established in 1849. In 1908 the Central Technical College began offering technical education courses on
the site of QUT's present Gardens Point campus, continuing the Central Technical College's tradition of
vocation-linked education.
In the same decade, training colleges in Queensland began providing career-centred education for the teaching profession. The institutions which evolved from the teacher training colleges combined in 1982 with the North Brisbane College of Advanced Education to become the Brisbane College of Advanced Education.
Thus, QUT's emphasis of combining a scholarly ethos with effective professional training builds on its predecessor institutions' long record of providing professional education in Queensland.
UTS
was formed at the beginning of 1988 from the former NSW Institute of
Technology, and was restructured in 1990 with the merger of the 'Old UTS'
with the Kuring-gai College of Advanced Education, the School of Design, and
the Institute of Technical and Adult Teacher Education, forming the current
UTS. The profile of its antecedent institutions, going back as far as 1893
but taking new shapes from the 1960s onwards, combined with its
predominantly CBD location in the world city of Sydney to forge a clear
identity.
UTS is a University focused on practice oriented education with strong links to industry, the professions and the community, and with a growing research reputation and a strong commitment to internationalisation.