There had been apprehensions amongst some of the University’s staff that demand for UniSA-PAL would eclipse that for the Diploma in University Studies. However, and as discussed briefly above, the students who have been attracted to the PAL course are not, in their teachers’ view, ever likely to have taken the step of enrolling directly into the University, even into an access diploma designed with people like them in mind. From this it appears that the two courses are appealing to different cohorts and filling different educational needs, which will enable them to be developed and to evolve in collaboration rather than in competition. From one of the schools’ perspective,
What we have hit is a cohort that would never have seen themselves as heading for university.
They would not be here but for the gateway of PAL. They would never have come here.
And from the University’s:
I can’t see any reason why the two programs can’t continue to collaborate and grow. I think that both are going to have advantages for different groups of students
There has been a strong increase in demand for the Diploma in University Studies during the same years in which the UniSA-PAL course was introduced - a twenty per cent increase in the preferences and acceptances for the Diploma course during PAL’s first two years, and the need to double the number of student places (EFTSU) available to the program in 2004.
I think perhaps the networking and marketing of the program are just starting to take a hold in the kind of areas they need to.