Motto | Educating professionals. Creating and applying knowledge. Engaging our communities. |
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Type | Public research university |
Established |
|
Endowment | A$607.54 million |
Chancellor | Jim McDowell |
Vice-Chancellor | David Lloyd |
Academic staff
|
3,064 (Full-time) |
Students | 32,000 (2015) |
Location |
Adelaide, Whyalla and Mount Gambier, SA, Australia 34°55′29.41″S 138°35′44.35″E / 34.9248361°S 138.5956528°ECoordinates: 34°55′29.41″S 138°35′44.35″E / 34.9248361°S 138.5956528°E |
Organisations | |
Colours | Blue, White |
Sports | UniSA Sport |
Website | www |
University rankings | |
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University of South Australia | |
QS World | 279 |
THE-WUR World | 201-250 |
USNWR World | 433= |
CWTS Leiden World | 255 |
Australian rankings | |
QS National | 15 |
THE-WUR National | 9 |
CWTS Leiden National | 15 |
ERA National | 8 |
The University of South Australia (UniSA) is a public research university in the Australian state of South Australia. It is the largest university in South Australia with more than 32,000 students.
The university was founded in its current form in 1991 with the merger of the South Australian Institute of Technology (1889) and College of Advanced Education (1856), combining more than 150 years of teaching and research history. The legislation to establish and name the new University of South Australia was introduced by the Hon Mike Rann MP, Minister of Employment and Further Education.
Under the University's Act, its original mission was "to preserve, extend and disseminate knowledge through teaching, research, scholarship and consultancy, and to provide educational programs that will enhance the diverse cultural life of the wider community".
The University of South Australia is among the world's top universities, ranked within the top 300 universities worldwide by the QS World University Ranking and top 15 nationally in research outcomes. In 2015, UniSA was named as one of the world’s best young universities ranked in the world’s top 50 under 50 at #25 by Quacarelli Symonds and #38 by Times Higher Education.
The University is a founding member of the Australian Technology Network of universities. It has two Adelaide city centre campuses, two Adelaide metropolitan campuses, and two South Australian regional campuses.
The University of South Australia was formed with the merger of the South Australian Institute of Technology (SAIT) with three of the campuses (Magill, Salisbury and Underdale) of the South Australian College of Advanced Education (SACAE) in 1991. The two other SACAE campuses, City and Sturt, were merged with the University of Adelaide and Flinders University respectively. To the former SACAE campuses of Magill, Salisbury and Underdale, SAIT added to the merger its three campuses at City East, The Levels (now known as Mawson Lakes) and Whyalla.
Salisbury campus was vacated in 1996, but its sale was held up for many years by litigation. In 1997, a new campus was opened at City West. In 2005, the campus at Underdale was closed as part of the Blueprint 2005 project, and its programmes were moved to other campuses. Some services still reside at Underdale such as Document Services. Blueprint 2005 also involved a number of new buildings, in particular at City West and Mawson Lakes.