It was the best type of news for fire-affected Mountains HSC students — a guaranteed berth to their local university.
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The University of Western Sydney usually only admits about 150 to 200 Mountains students but next year they are hoping they all come — all 712 of them from the Blue Mountains and Lithgow areas. Eight high schools were forced to close during the bushfires. Some students were evacuated in the middle of sitting tests, other students were out fighting the fires in volunteer brigades and many lost homes, possessions and all their HSC study notes.
UWS Vice-Chancellor Janice Reid said when the university body looked after the 31 students and four staff who had lost homes at their uni — through a $50,000 fund-raising grant — they wondered what else they could do to help the region.
“We thought we would give them [the HSC students] a guarantee, one way of contributing after the fires,” Professor Reid said. “The UWS is very much part of the Blue Mountains and Lithgow community. A large group is suffering, when there are fires raging around you it’s very traumatic [to try to study],” she said.
Professor Reid told the group of assembled journalists at the announcement on Monday she wasn’t aware if historically another university had ever made an offer like it.
“Not that I know of [but] this is our community it’s something we can do. We want to ensure no Blue Mountains or Lithgow HSC student faces a setback to their plans to go university.”
Blue Mountains mayor Mark Greenhill called it an amazing gesture. “We’re a community who has had a lot of bad news,” Clr Greenhill said. “For a wounded community it tells us we don’t walk alone, we haven’t been forgotten.”
Three HSC students said it was a great relief to hear the news. Josh Zolfel, of St Columba’s at Springwood, hopes to become a PE teacher and said the news has “taken all the stress of my shoulders”. Also from St Columba’s Ben Falchi had picked UWS’s Bachelor of Business as his first choice and said the news has taken away “the uncertainly of our results ... just knowing there’s a spot for us at uni”.
Antonia Vial, who lost her homes during the fires said one minute she was studying for exams, the next she got a call about a fire in her area and left home. “When I came back my house had burnt down, it’s been really hard.”
The University will talk to all HSC students and high schools and parents to work out the best courses for the students. There are 150 courses to choose from over six campuses.
“We have all the systems set up, foundation courses .. they might decide to go to TAFE and get credit towards a degree, there are multiple pathways it’s a matter of talking to their schools, their parents.”
The University is also offering $2000 scholarships for students whose homes were destroyed or damaged to pay for study materials.
Some specialist UWS programs, such as medicine, midwifery, physiotherapy, paramedicine and music, require additional selection criteria.
