HEAD of Campus at La Trobe’s Shepparton campus, Elizabeth Capp, has said more than 5000 prospective students logged into the university’s virtual online Regional Open Day on Sunday.
The annual open day, normally a chance for the campus to throw open its doors, was run online this year with future students able to drop into Q and A sessions with academics, hear from current students and have virtual tours of the university’s four regional campuses.
“We really miss being able to open up our campuses, but this virtual format proved popular,” Ms Capp said.
According to early figures, about 50 percent of all ‘attendees’ were year 12 students.
The Shepparton campus, home to about 450 students, is the university’s smallest site, with other regional campuses located in Wodonga, Bendigo, and Mildura.
The tertiary education sector has been hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown, and La Trobe University recently opened up a second round of voluntary redundancies following the departure of 239 employees earlier in the year.
Ms Capp said five staff at the Shepparton Campus had already accepted redundancy packages, from a core group of about 30.
Nursing, social work, primary and early childhood education, business and arts are the five study areas taught at the Shepparton campus. However, Ms Capp couldn’t rule out changes to the campus’ offerings going forward.
“That’s what we have this year, but everything is being reviewed at the moment and there may be some changes,” she said.
“Some of that may expand, some of that may contract, because we’re in some very tough times at the moment and we’re going to need to think about our course offerings across all campuses and how we can possibly streamline some of those.”
