LA Trobe University and Bendigo TAFE have announced a year-long celebration to mark one hundred and fifty years of tertiary education in the city.<\/p>\n
Bendigo Tertiary Education Anniversary Foundation chair Penny Davies said it had been a journey that started with the mining industry in 1873.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith the mining in Ballarat and Bendigo and other centres around Australia, there was a call put out that we really needed to educate these miners,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had just passed the industrial revolution, and we were starting to think about machinery doing the jobs of people.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome auspicious citizens got together in Bendigo and formed a committee and very soon after that the School of Mines was established.\u201d<\/p>\n
Although, it wasn\u2019t always smooth sailing Ms Davies said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt continued to have prosperous and less than prosperous times over the next century,\u201d she said. \u201cIt was funded not by governments but by contributors.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe thought miners or mining companies might finance the place ran off the rails a bit because there were a number of mining depressions during that time.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Bendigo School of Mines managed to survive until 1959, from there several changes took place. said.<\/p>\n
\u201cGovernments had become very involved by then, so the name was changed to the Bendigo Technical College,\u201d Ms Davies said.<\/p>\n
\u201cMore name changes came again in the 1960s to the Bendigo Institute of Technology, then in 1976 to the Bendigo College of Advanced Education.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 1987 the Northern District School of Nursing also joined, and it was around this time a partnership with a university was considered Ms Davies said.<\/p>\n
\u201cUniversities were really growing in Victoria,\u201d she said. \u201cThere were four unis by then Melbourne, Monash, La Trobe and Deakin.<\/p>\n
\u201cLa Trobe had similar philosophies and policies to our own. Whilst the initial courtship was a bit rocky, we have been very pleased to be with La Trobe formally since the 1990s.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ms Davies said it wasn\u2019t just the University that was on a path of growth throughout history.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the middle of all of that, we had the technical division that we know best as TAFE,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn 1983 the TAFE College separated from the College of Advanced Education and they have gone on to have various name changes and changes in their own focus.<\/p>\n
\u201cTAFE has always had an underlying trade look at the world and that has been their prime target.\u201d<\/p>\n