‘Education capital’ potential

TERRITORY community leaders are overwhelmed by the potential for change with 5000 international students anticipated to join CDU’s city campus by 2025.

Lord Mayor Kon Vatskalis said Darwin’s transformation into a university town was a long time coming.

“It’s going to bring new vibrancy, it’s going to bring something in the city we’re lacking,” he said.

“Bringing these kinds of numbers of students in Darwin will create three things.

“First, they will stimulate the economy because these people bring money to the economy.

“Second, they have to stay somewhere, so there will be demand for housing, so the dead market we see now is going to pick up, and the third one is we’re creating ambassadors that will go out there, become professionals in their own country and they will remember with kindness the place they studied in Australia.

“These are the things that promote our image overseas and at the same time we’ll be helping overseas students achieve what they want.”

He was excited at the potential for thousands of young minds to bring new ideas to Darwin.

“If you live in a country a long time you tend to think along the lines of the country,” he said.

“You get somebody from outside, all of a sudden you bring a breath of fresh air, a change of ideas, a change of direction ... it takes you to new tangents.”

Mr Vatskalis also hoped it would transform Darwin’s image.

“We’re closer to Indonesia, China, Thailand, Vietnam than any other place in Australia,” he said.

“We can become the education capital of Australia.

“CDU is not a little university in a provincial town in Australia but a university that provides good degrees and good education to thousands of people from outside Australia.”