Bright future for tertiary destination in Christchurch

Bright future for tertiary destination in Christchurch

September 5, 2012

University of Canterbury (UC) Vice-Chancellor Dr Rod Carr today said the future looked bright for tertiary education in Christchurch in the post-earthquake era.

Dr Carr was addressing a launch of a marketing strategy for the international education sector in Christchurch today and he emphasised that as New Zealand’s second largest education area, the city was a safe destination for students.

``Christchurch is an international education destination and we at UC are the biggest education centre in the city. UC has responded rapidly post-earthquakes with so much activity progressing and developing on campus,’’ he said.

The latest Metro magazine article on university options for prospective students presents a strong case to support UC.

``Think about Canterbury. It’s a very good all-round university…it offers so many opportunities, in academic study and in personal lives, to make a major and intensely rewarding contribution to the community. Canterbury has worked hard this year to maintain its academic programme and reports that ‘student engagement and academic performance have been above the norm’, ‘’ the magazine said.

Dr Carr said the recovery at UC to this point had been remarkable.

``Today we have 13,000 students, 1900 staff and 600 courses for this semester and applications to our halls of residence for 2013 are clearly up by over 30 percent on the last year.

``We have built 15,000 square metres of resource learning in Kirkwood and Dovedale Villages and we are remediating other buildings as we go while the Undercroft has become the new central hub for students to gather,’’ Dr Carr said.

UC is leading post-earthquake research with 170 projects looking into a wide range of subjects.

Earlier, Minister for Tertiary Education, Skills and Employment Hon Steven Joyce rolled out the first phase of the Christchurch education destination launch which presented a unified future for the area’s schools, polytechnics, university.

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