By KATHRYN BERMINGHAM
MONASH University never gave its Berwick campus a chance to succeed, according the president of the student union.
Tyrone Badar, president of the Monash Union of Berwick Students (MUBS), said via a statement released on Thursday 9 March that the university had neglected its outer-suburban campus for a number of years.
“Ask any student who has an understanding of the inner working of this university and they will all tell you the same thing,” he said.
“Monash University has consistently undervalued the Berwick campus and viewed it as a poorer, insignificant sibling without much to offer.”
Monash opened the campus in 1996 with the intent of capitalising on one of the region’s fastest-growing corridors.
A 2003 masterplan for the campus, carried out by Billard Leece Partnership, outlined a “dynamic and memorable university campus with an evolving, expanding community of learning, living and working”.
But instead of the bustling education hub envisaged more than a decade ago, only 1800 students are now based at Berwick, with more than 1000 round trips to other campuses taking place each week in 2016.
While Monash has attributed Berwick’s woes to lack of enrolments, Mr Badar said the university did not offer an adequate number of places and moved units to other campuses.
“Monash created a self-fulfilling prophecy that the Berwick campus would not succeed,” he said.
“Plans were created and rarely followed through on as needed, leaving students hanging, courses failing and staff without answers.”
The attention of MUBS has now turned to ensuring that current students are not disadvantaged by the closure.
“It is the union’s belief that all Berwick students should have the right to finish their degree in Berwick because that’s what they signed up for,” Mr Badar said.
“While we hope that the university will see some common sense in relation to this matter and re-evaluate this decision, we expect that if the university continues to transition out of the Berwick campus it will do so with more grace than when it left Gippsland.”
