Hub figures stack up

I CONFESS I didn’t know much about an “international education hub” until I listened to Michael Healy, the Labor candidate for Cairns, express his support for one to be established in the Cairns area.

I did some further research. An education hub can consist of different university campuses, businesses, professional development and corporate training organisations all brought together in one designated region to attract students and to increase its competitiveness on the global stage.

There are many such education “hubs” around the world, in Vienna, Beijing, Milan, London, Sydney and Melbourne for example. It is a growing trend largely due to the increasing mobility of students today.

A total of 32,000 international students visited Cairns in 2016. These figures would surely support plans to establish such an education hub here. Alison Alloway, Westcourt 1665: Dutch fleet defeated by English off

Lowestoft, England. 1878: Phonograph demonstrated for first

time at Royal Society of Victoria. 1893: First women’s golf tournament is

played at Royal Lytham, England. 1917: Fourteen German Gotha bombers carry out the first large-scale bombing raid by planes on London, killing 162. 1945: Australian forces capture Brunei. 1956: British troops leave Suez Canal

base, turning waterway over to Egypt. 1969: Withdrawal of US troops from

South Vietnam begins in Mekong Delta. 1971: Australian woman Geraldine

Brodrick gives birth to nine babies. 1983: US spacecraft Pioneer 10 crosses orbit of Neptune and becomes first man-made object to leave solar system. 1990: East Germany begins final

demolition of the Berlin Wall. 1995: France announces it will abandon

its moratorium on nuclear testing. 2005: US pop star Michael Jackson (above) cleared of charges in a sex abuse trial. 2007: Hamas launches a battle for

control of the entire Gaza Strip. 2012: Australian jazz great Graeme Bell,

dies aged 97. 2016: Microsoft agrees to buy LinkedIn for $US26.2 billion in the company’s biggest-ever deal.