University of Canberra (UC) vice-chancellor Bill Shorten is pushing for a merger with the city’s troubled vocational education institute, in a move that could produce Australia’s seventh dual-sector university.
Shorten said an amalgamation with the century-old Canberra Institute of Technology (CIT) was “unfinished business”, with the idea having circulated “in different forms” for around 15 years.
“There have been calls from a range of voices across the…Canberra community that perhaps it’s now time for CIT and UC to talk about a joined-up future together,” said Shorten, a former federal opposition leader. “I’m pleased to say [UC] welcomes this discussion.”
His intervention follows a week of horror headlines for CIT, whose CEO Margot McNeill resigned on 11 August after spending months on leave amid a legal joust over her mid-2025 appointment.
McNeill had failed to tell her recruiters that she was under investigation by her then employer, the public vocational education provider in New South Wales, over allegations of serious misconduct. Australian Capital Territory (ACT) parliamentarians have recommended that she be investigated by the territory’s public sector standards commissioner, while the ACT government has committed to review CIT’s governance.
