Victorian College of the Arts
Integration with University of Melbourne
Contents
Background to Integration

On 1 January 2007 the Victorian College of the Arts became a faculty of the University of Melbourne with which it has been affiliated since 1991.

This decision was taken in late 2005 to ensure the long term financial viability of the VCA — one of only three institutions in the world with all major art forms under one roof.  Integration will enable the College to continue and enhance its role as Australia’s pre-eminent provider of visual and performing arts training and education

Following is the history to this development and a discussion of the benefits of integration for both institutions.

Benefits of Integration
  • Providing the VCA with a secure, certain and sustainable framework that will enable it to continue in its role as Australia’s pre-eminent provider of visual and performing arts training, education and research;
  • Creating an expanded VCA, as a new faculty of the University of Melbourne,  on its current site, committed to innovation and leadership in contemporary, professional, practise-based visual and performing arts training, education and research and to expanding the boundaries of arts practice within both discipline-specific and multi-disciplinary curriculum models;
  • Expanding the capacity of the University to provide broad-based visual and performing arts training and education to non-practitioners as part of other disciplinary curriculum models;
  • Bringing into the University the international reputation and distinctive pedagogy of the VCA;
  • Providing VCA staff and students with opportunities for collaboration between the VCA and the University’s faculties and provision of visual and performing arts training, education and research on the VCA Southbank site;
  • Fulfilling the potential of the VCA Southbank site to become an internationally recognised precinct for training, education and research in the visual and performing arts;
  • Enhancing the reputations of both the University and the VCA; and
  • Providing the opportunity for administrative synergies across the two institutions to be realised.
  • In addition the VCA occupies prime real estate (Crown Land) in the heart of the Southbank Arts Precinct to the value of approximately $180 million and has close working relationships with the many arts providers within that precinct and beyond. The value of the financial and other property (non-land) assets it will bring to the University are in the order of $93 million.

Click here to see the operational information and timeline for Integration

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About the University of Melbourne

The University of Melbourne was established in 1853, the first university in the state of Victoria and the second in Australia.

It is the leading research university in Australia based on key national indicators of performance. Its qualifications are highly-regarded by students and employers, and Melbourne graduates have a strong record of success in obtaining employment and making wider contributions to the community in Australia and overseas.

The University of Melbourne has a growing international reputation and has recently been ranked by the Times Higher Education Supplement as the No 1 University in Australia and 19th in the world, joining Harvard, Princeton, Oxford and Cambridge in the world’s top 20 universities. 

The University makes a treasury of Australia’s cultural heritage accessible to the public and scholars, and actively contributes to Australia’s cultural dynamism through its myriad collections, academic and public programs, the Melbourne Theatre Company, Melbourne University Publishing, the Victorian College of the Arts, Ian Potter Museum of Art, Faculty of Music and Asialink.

The University’s main campus of the University is at Parkville.  The original campus has been greatly expanded in recent years with the addition of the University Square precinct.

Melbourne’s diverse student enrolment of 42,000 includes 8000 international students.  There are around 6000 academic and general staff. Each year around 1000 students who have suffered some disadvantage enter through a special access program.

There are 12 faculties (including the VCA) - Architecture Building & Planning, Arts, Economics & Commerce, Education, Engineering, Land & Food Resources, Law, Music, Medicine, Dentistry & Health Science, Science, Veterinary Science - and a School of Graduate Studies with faculty status and the Melbourne Business School.

More than 30 educational and research institutions are affiliated with the University of Melbourne.

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The pre-existing relationship between VCA and the University of Melbourne

On 1 July 1991, the Victorian College of the Arts became an affiliated college of the University of Melbourne. This affiliation preserved the distinctive character and mission of the VCA whilst extending its capacity to fulfil the special role that it has within Australian higher education.

Under the affiliation agreement, VCA award courses were approved by the University’s Academic Board, VCA students are students of the University and their degrees conferred by the University. 

Since then the University received a discrete amount of funding from the Commonwealth identified specifically for VCA students, which it channelled directly to the VCA.

In 1999, following discussions with the University and the VCA, DETYA acknowledged the high costs involved in the provision of intensive, specialist training at the VCA across six creative disciplines and approved a reduction in the VCA component of the University’s student load over the period 2000-2002 without a decrease in the operating grant, thus increasing per student VCA funding.  Under a continuation of these arrangements the 2004 level of Commonwealth funding for the VCA would have been $19,028.00 per student. 
In 2005 the Higher Education Support Act (HESA) legislation introduced a mechanism of Commonwealth funding according to subsidies per student set by discipline.  VCA students fall within the Visual and Performing Arts cluster, for which the Commonwealth contribution per student was set at $9,091.  Taking into account the amount of the relevant student contribution (HECS) $3,854, this led to a funding shortfall of more than $6,000 per student in 2005.

Despite representations to the Commonwealth by the University, the VCA, the Victorian government, the Opposition, and the minor parties, the Commonwealth maintained the new funding basis for VCA students.  A proposal that responsibility for the VCA be transferred to the Department of Communication, Information Technology and the Arts (DOCITA) was also rejected by the Commonwealth.

In late 2004, The Federal Minister for Education instructed the University of Melbourne to make up the shortfall of funding to the VCA from its own funds for an indefinite number of years. Until this time, the University had had no financial responsibility for the VCA but had simply acted as a post-box for the VCA’s grant.

In December 2004, the University signed its 2005 funding agreement with this condition under protest. The result was that approximately $4.6 million of University funds were diverted from teaching and research to the VCA in 2005 with at least equivalent amounts to be diverted in future years.

Both the University and the VCA have acknowledged that such an arrangement is not acceptable to either party and does not provide the VCA with a secure and sustainable future. Accordingly the VCA and the University agreed earlier this year to explore the options for a closer relationship which recognised that, despite many years of discussion by the VCA with the State and Federal Governments, there has been little or no prospect of an alternative ongoing satisfactory funding arrangement.

As a result of the discussions at senior management level, the VCA and the University have agreed to recommend that the VCA integrate fully with the University as a faculty.

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