Britain's global academic footprint looks set to expand this month after Cranfield University becomes the country's first institution of higher learning to plant the union flag on Australian soil. The university specialises in defence and security studies, or what it describes as issues of "resilience", covering a range of areas from an organisation's vulnerability to terrorist attacks or the best options for using explosive devices for clearing mines, to research programmes including disaster management and missile control systems.
The cooperation shown by authorities in Britain and Australia in the wake of the recently thwarted terrorist attacks against targets in London and Glasgow - though now discredited since the release of the Indian doctor arrested on, and then cleared of, terrorism charges in Brisbane - would be a natural subject of interest to Cranfield educators, as well as to government officials in Australia.
Certainly, those specialisms have gone down well with the British university's opposite numbers in South Australia, home to a swath of the country's major defence and mining companies. Although the state is well supplied with undergraduate programmes at its three established universities - Adelaide, South Australia and Flinders - attracting new, specialised postgraduate programmes is part of its blueprint, more than a decade in the making, for positioning itself as the region's new higher education hub.
Campus aims
And so Cranfield, which also has campuses in Silsoe in Bedfordshire and Shrivenham in Wiltshire, has established its latest operation in the South Australian capital of Adelaide. The move is part of an international venture that education planners from both countries hope will eventually become a fully fledged campus. For now, it is set to offer short-term postgraduate degrees in defence management and technology, in conjunction with local academic institutions and distance learning courses administered from Britain and the university's new Adelaide office.
Cranfield, which was established in 1946 as a college of aeronautics, is unusual among British academic institutions for taking only postgraduates, as well as being associated with a substantial airfield. The university enrols roughly 10% of the country's engineering postgraduates, and is recognised globally for its courses in defence and management.
It has close ties with the defence industry and with the Ministry of Defence, under contract from which it runs its Defence College of Management and Technology. In terms of the proportion of research income it receives from private sources, "we're head and shoulders above any other UK university by a factor of two, which shows our very, very close relations to the industry", says Professor Hugh Griffiths, the principal of the Defence College, a key player in the Adelaide negotiations, which also centre on the local defence industry.
It was in 1996 that South Australia first identified higher education as a potentially lucrative source of revenue. Not only could elite foreign institutions bring new students to the geographically isolated city of Adelaide, the thinking went, but niche programmes would offer new opportunities for those already there, particularly those working in the city's state service, entertainment and defence sectors.
The Singapore-style venture - so-called because of its similarities to the south-east Asian state's efforts during the same period to refashion itself as "the Boston of the East" - has evolved largely on the watch of the state's Labor party premier, Mike Rann, who was returned to office last year after campaigning largely on his educational achievements.
Speaking at the signing of the Cranfield agreement, Rann paid tribute to the institution's close ties with the military "and how their research and courses are designed and taught to cater for precise capability requirements". That, he noted, was "exactly the model South Australia's burgeoning defence industry is following".
In Canberra, the Australian national capital, such academic entrepreneurship has appealed to a federal government eager to welcome a new institution that, as well as having the right reputation, could help the country to expand its foreign student market. The government moved quickly to amend legislation that until late 2005 did not allow foreign universities to offer degrees in the country.
Last year, Australia welcomed the country's first foreign higher education institution to its 39-strong university club: Carnegie Mellon, an American university with a reputation for excellence in science and technology. The country's 40th university now offers US degrees in entertainment technology and management studies to around 100, mainly foreign, students enrolled at its Adelaide branch, located in the same downtown premises as the new Cranfield operation. The American degrees on offer are the same as those already taught at the university's Pittsburgh location - as is their annual cost of between $30,000 and $50,000 (£15,000-£25,000).
"One of the things we knew, but which still came as a surprise, is the fact that, unlike many other parts of the world, students in Australia don't like to travel for their higher education," says Timothy Zak, the chief executive of Carnegie Mellon's Heinz school in Adelaide, reflecting on the challenges awaiting his British counterparts. "While we certainly would like to recruit students outside Australia, we are still pretty under-represented in the country.
"Any time you set up a campus in another part of the world, our experience tells us, there will be a lot of effort required, not least when it comes to the idiosyncrasies of a culture and place. But Cranfield, being a university of high regard and reputation, will be a great addition, no doubt."
Electronic warfare
Cranfield's presence will initially be a relatively small one, limited to short-term programmes, typically enrolling up to 30 students apiece, divided between conventional face-to-face instruction and distance learning modes. The university has signed an agreement with the South Australian government to run two defence-related courses in integrated logistical support and electronic warfare at the University of Adelaide, as well as developing similar courses for the University of South Australia.
Over time, the plan is to deliver more professional development courses, teaching modules and dual degrees, and to implement academic staff exchanges between universities and the Australian Defence Science and Technology Organisation. Cranfield is also exploring possible collaborations with Flinders and Carnegie Mellon.
Still, foreign ventures opening their academic doors offshore can be a touchy subject in Australia, where publicly funded local institutions are perpetually strapped for cash and, in some cases, have been known to resent the cash incentives offered to the international newcomers. (The new British office's £1m budget has been jointly underwritten by Cranfield and the South Australian government.) UNSW Asia, Australia's first attempt to establish its own offshore campus, in Singapore, recently went bust only months into its operation thanks to an enrolment slump and poor business planning.
But, says Griffiths, the city's existing institutions "have been very supportive. I think they recognise we have some very distinctive things to offer through our deep associations with defence and security - areas that universities do not normally have - and so they are keen to work with us.
"Clearly, anything we do has to be financially viable, so no, we wouldn't be doing it if it weren't making us a profit. But there are altruistic motives as well. We like to see ourselves as a player on the world stage, so it's good for us to be involved in other countries."