Canberra Times 29 March 2012
The proposed University Canberra Institute of Technology (UCIT) has been put on ice – and 
possibly off the agenda altogether – while the ACT Government negotiates future vocational and training reforms with the Commonwealth. ACT Education Minister Chris Bourke says the Government will wait until the Council of Australian Governments meeting on 13 April to see what new Commonwealth funding will be available to the ACT before it commits to any formal links between the University of Canberra (UC) and the Canberra Institute of Technology (CIT).
The proposed UCIT, announced by the ACT Government last December, was an 11th-hour compromise to create a new institution to offer associate degrees and diplomas after the CIT resisted a formal merger with the UC. The move came after the Legislative Assembly passed a Greens motion to force the issue into the Education Standing Committee after long-running concerns by the Greens, ACT Liberals and education unions over the government’s lack of detailed information on, or planning around, the new venture.
University of Canberra vice-chancellor Stephen Parker has expressed dismay with the way the future of the UC and CIT had been handled since former ACT education minister Andrew Barr commissioned the Bradley Review of future collaboration between UC and CIT, which recommended a full blown merger to create a dual sector university. Parker said that regardless of the ACT Government’s decision on whether to go ahead in linking UC with the CIT, the UC would be expanding, ”…whether it is through (its own) polytechnic, the UCIT or through the UC College. ”
