Cream of the crop: UOW receives $5 million in funding for excellence in teaching and learning

Nov 30, 2005

The University of Wollongong has been rewarded with $5.108 million in funding for ranking number one in the country for teaching performance.

The grant follows The Australian's front page announcement in August this year that UOW had beaten the nation's most prestigious higher learning institutions in a ranking of the nation's 38 publicly funded universities.

The University of Wollongong's $5 million reward from this ranking, based on DEST's 'Student Outcome Indicators for the Learning and Teaching Performance Fund', was officially announced last night by Minister for Education, Science and Training, Dr Brendan Nelson who revealed that UOW was one of the top five universities in the country to share in $30 million. The total funding amount given to universities for 2006 was $54 million.

Vice-Chancellor, Professor Gerard Sutton, said the grant would be put towards maintaining UOW's strong position.

“It's significant for the University, there's no doubt about that,” he said.

“It's significant for our region that we are up there with the best of the institutions in the country. And the funds will go to use - we will use them in the category we got the funding for, and the idea will be to stay in that top category.”

The universities were judged on a number of criteria including student employment, outcomes, progress, attrition, progression to full-time study and satisfaction.

Dr Nelson said the Learning and Teaching Performance Fund scheme would ultimately distribute $250 million to universities demonstrating teaching excellence.

“While teaching is a vital activity for Australian universities, excellence in this area has not been properly rewarded nor recognised as it should be,” he said.