Objectives

The ATN is focussed on building partnerships and finding solutions.

By drawing together five of the nation’s most innovative and enterprising universities, the ATN is well positioned to build on its existing strategic partnerships with the community, industry and business. The ATN is focussed on solution based research which has an impact and makes a difference in the communities within which we operate.

Our objectives are:

To be a cohesive and authoritative voice in the tertiary sector to help influence government policy formation;
To produce highly employable graduates;
To position the members of the ATN as sector leaders in the area of staff and student equity;
To establish a strong market presence to build greater market share domestically and to develop new markets internationally;
To share costs for comparable developments in areas such as administration, student support, online delivery and courseware;
To collaborate to enable greater market reach than can be achieved by individual institutions in areas such as educational programs, consultancies and grants and research and development;
To optimise research opportunities and partnerships to consolidate research standing;
To consider affiliations with similar institutions overseas;
To share information and collaboration on the development of initiatives that benefit each member university.

Research and Development Objectives

The ATN partner universities have rapidly built a solid body of research, with a strong emphasis on applied research, and research conducted in partnership with the professions and industries. The ATN believes it has greater flexibility in the kind of research its members undertake, with many of our collaborations with research-users rather than research-providers. In this sense, the ATN distinguishes itself from other institutions, with a focused effort on measuring positive client satisfaction. We are focussed on research which has an impact and makes a difference in the communities within which we operate.

To this end our core objectives in this area are:

To pursue a joint approach to developing research and development in newly emerging discipline areas;
To investigate whether complementary research strengths can be identified with a view to pursuing collaborative research grants (government and industry);
To provide benchmarking for the quality assurance of research within the ATN.
To pursue joint approaches in improving the quality of research training and maximising the career outcomes of ATN research graduates.
To focus research into areas that have measurably useful applications in industry and business.
To develop education programs that increases both the learning capability and employability of graduates.

Consultancy Objectives

The ATN endeavours to take a corporate approach to consultancies, not because it in itself is a business, but because it recognises the importance of assisting business to achieve its corporate goals. By drawing together five of the nation’s most innovative and enterprising universities, the ATN can offer leading edge skills in the development and commercialisation of intellectual property. To this end, our core objectives are as follows:

To pursue joint national and international consultancy activities which, as individual institutions, members’ reputation or capacity might be insufficient to attract or to handle the necessary work (for example: Work Bank, Asia Development Bank);
To develop operational arrangements, through strong project management and client management methodologies. This will support service to clients by ensuring both consistent and high quality processes.

Equity and Access Objectives

To improve outcomes related to staff and student equity by way of:

Exchanging information on policies and programs, and promoting best practice
Annual benchmarking on key data such as student access, participation , success and retention
Annual benchmarking on emerging issues such as support measures for low-SES students
Timely and strategic projects on aspects of equity and access for staff and students

MOU Agreement 2004

The members of the ATN believe that the shared resources brought together by their collaboration will assist in developing both the quality and the cost-effectiveness of their programs.