Federation University has welcomed this week's federal budget and expects to see flow-on effects to Ballarat from many of the policies announced.
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In addition to measures directly targeted at regional universities - including increasing the number of places available and providing scholarships to students to study in regional areas in the hopes they stay after graduating - Federation University vice chancellor Professor Duncan Bentley said investment in research and advanced manufacturing could bring benefits to Ballarat.
"We are really chuffed there's $1 billion for research but realise that metropolitan universities will scoop their hands in and get most if it, but we can leverage it to work with industry on a range of different initiatives to increase local research," he said.
Digital health, renewable energy and agri-technology are among the industries he expects to see boom in coming years.
The budget also offered an extension to the current program of short courses to reskill and upskill, advanced apprenticeships that cross the divide between VET and higher education with a focus on women in STEM fields, and apprentice wage subsidies - which Professor Bentley said was particularly important to Federation as a dual-sector university.
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He expected that Fed Uni would benefit from a new fringe benefit tax exemption on retraining which will allow medium sized business to retrain staff in areas that are not their traditional roles without paying FBT, with the university positioned to provide courses to help retrain workers.
And a new small business research and development incentive could allow small to medium sized businesses to work with the university to employ masters or PhD candidates to work on projects and research to allow them to completely re-engineer how they deliver products as they move in to advanced manufacturing.
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