Newcastle is no longer a one-horse town reliant on BHP as a major employer, with education leading the charge in the city's economic and social rebirth. Australia's seventh biggest city has seen enormous investment in education in recent years, a trend which shows no sign of abating.
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The University of Newcastle's (UON) long-awaited $95 million New Space city campus opened this year, while Japan's Nihon University has chosen the NSW coastal city as the site of its first Australian campus.
Additionally, there's been $3.8 million in federal funding for the Hunter TAFE campus, while the UON, one of the region's biggest employers, plans a second city campus on the disused rail corridor, with work set to start next year. This will effectively double student numbers in the city to about 6500 (the UON has almost 27,000 students enrolled across its two campuses - the city and the original Callaghan campus).
UON is now ranked in the top one per cent of universities worldwide, according to the QS World University Rankings. Photo: Quentin Jones
But tertiary education isn't the only sector to see change: a high-rise K-12 school is also proposed for Newcastle's burgeoning west end to accommodate an expected swell of school-aged kids in the city over the next 20 years.
Education is a huge driver for Newcastle, once reliant on the steel and coal industries, says Mark Kentwell, founder and director of PRD Nationwide Newcastle and Lake Macquarie. He explains that Japanese, Korean and Chinese investors have their eye on the city as an emerging hotspot: "They've seen that Sydney is quite expensive and a bit of a minefield to navigate, and are looking at the fundamentals of Newcastle, where we've now got a major university in the CBD."
UON is now ranked in the top one per cent of universities worldwide, according to the QS World University Rankings. The university has moved up the rankings since 2016 by 21 places and is ranked 224 out of an estimated 26,000 universities across the world, and is in the top 10 Australian universities - reflecting its performance as a world-class research-intensive school.
The new city campus and the planned Japanese university in the old courthouse have played a big part in the region's growth. Photo: Quentin Jones
"That's a massive investment opportunity on its own for Newcastle," Kentwell says. "You can already see the impact on the streets of Newcastle, with thousands of students circulating. The new campus is a public building so you can walk though at any time. Imagine the impact the second campus will have on the old rail corridor."
Developer Warwick Miller, who has completed multiple residential and commercial developments in inner-city Newcastle, says the new city campus and the planned Japanese university in the old courthouse have played a big part in the region's growth. The strong economy, he says, means graduating students can now stay in Newcastle and earn a decent living, rather than have to leave the lifestyle they enjoy for job opportunities in capital cities.
Kentwell agrees that job opportunities have increased dramatically in Newcastle - a far cry from when BHP was the town's major employer and coal was the number one driver of economy in the Hunter region. "Now education is attracting both investment and driving population," he says.