Uni Newcastle has a flash new-site and Macquarie U plans to build a new law school

VC Alex Zelinsky has the keys to Uni Newcastle’s hip new Honeysuckle city-fringe campus, which will be home to creative, performing and digital arts courses, plus space for entrepreneur start-ups and scale-ups.

There may be more to come, original thinking on the river-site site included talk of student accommodation (CMM February 21 2019).

Honeysuckle is but a boulevardier’s progress to the university’s other CBD-site, the customised learning NuSpace. Both pre-date the pandemic but are based on the continuing assumption that in-person education is set to stay.

Macquarie U is even more certain that campus based study will put the plague in the past.  In October it completed a flash-indeed arts precinct, with “specialised spaces that enable us to blend theory and practice and implement our signature learning and teaching methodologies.” And last week it lodged development plans for “alterations, additions and adaptive reuse of the existing building,” to become new premises for its law school. At $28m the project is more modest than the $39m cost previously estimated by engineers but it’s still a vote of confidence in the campus, especially at a time when M U announced a $50m loss for last year.