COUNTRY Universities Centre (CUC) Snowy Monaro Common Ground community graduation featured an informative and honest guest panel of students who shared their study journey experiences of the CUC program.

Their stories all carried the same message about the difficulties they faced as a mature-aged student, and the assistance they received from being part of the Common Ground program.

CUC education co-ordinator, Han Worsley, began the graduation event, held at the Alpine Hotel, by thanking and acknowledging the CUC partners who assist in the Common Ground program - the University of Canberra, The Australian National University, Australian Catholic University, University of New England and TAFE Cooma.

Common Ground is a community-driven project that aims to increase the understanding and awareness of higher education in Cooma.

Han said the program over the last two years has supported a cohort of community members who do not get much attention from the tertiary or higher education sector.

The program responds to gaps identified by extensive community consultation with stakeholders.

“We’ve been assisting mature age students, people who are over the age of 22, and looking to support adults who might not be interested in study themselves but to support people in their lives, who are studying; it might be employees or their children or other family members,” Han said.

“We think this is really important because when we talk about going to university, undertaking an apprenticeship or working through a TAFE course, no matter where you’re doing that, it takes a lot if you are from a rural or regional area and it takes a lot of effort if you are someone who has been out of the education system for a while and looking to get back into it.

“The goal with this program is to make it hyper-local - it’s not just rural people in general, it is Cooma people specifically. What can we offer people who live and work in our region?

“It also offers a broad approach in terms of partnerships with tertiary and higher education providers.”

Han said the specific local approach has been taken because Cooma presents unique opportunities for the program.

“We have the Snowy Hydro project, which offers incredible opportunities, which brings a lot of people from overseas to work here, who are on visas, and may be struggling to get their qualifications recognised, and that’s an asset for our town we can perhaps support better.

“We have also been trying to focus on helping people build up skills to address skills shortages here and trying to acknowledge as well that high rental and housing stress in Cooma plays a part in that people aren’t likely to give up the rental they have, or those who have grown up here don’t want to leave their families, so this program has been important in addressing Cooma-specific needs,” Han said.

“Becoming a student in Cooma absolutely has its challenges and the system isn’t always set up to support that, but this program has let us take a regional and local voice all the way up to the federal level, to individual universities, to TAFE and other institutions and it has brought us all together in a way we haven’t worked together before.

“We will have more discussions about what comes next, but the exciting thing is we now have wonderful relationships with all these partners and so this support can continue for our community.”