The Manukau Institute of Technology (MIT) is building a new campus in the suburb's CBD.

The campus is to be built in three phases, with a total cost of about $250 million. Phase one is already underway and due for completion in mid 2013 at a cost of $100 million.

“We’ve designed it in such a way so we can accommodate growth in phase one and we should reach maximum in phase one in about five years and then we plan two subsequent phases and the overall development will have a 65,000sq m footprint and accommodate approximately 7,000 equivalent full time students and a total 20,000-25,000 students in any one year,” MIT’s director of academic operations Peter Quigg says

The project has funded internally through reserves and borrowing facilities and the Auckland Council offering them a 99-year peppercorn lease has basically allowed them to go ahead with the project, Mr Quigg says.

Phase one represents about 40% of the project and is costing approximately $100 million and includes developing a transport hub with two components, a railway station and a bus interchange.

“It is a brand new railway line that has been built by Ontrack, instead of effectively building a railway station the rail public will come up into an atrium into the centre part of the new tertiary campus,” he says.

The railway is planned to be electrified in two years and Auckland Transport will manage the rail and bus stations.

Once phase one is complete it will be home to MIT’s business faculty and a number of other smaller programmes, Mr Quigg says.

It was difficult to cost the other two phases because he wasn’t sure when they would be built because they were going to be bought online as increased demand required more facilities but in today’s terms it would be approximately $150 million based on phase one costing $100 million, he says.

The institute’s enrolment had grown 40% in the last three years but they were still not satisfied with the community’s uptake of tertiary education and that was the driving force for the development, he says.

“The primary driver is the fact that for our community, the city’s community, the uptake for tertiary education is about half the national average.

“We now have the unique opportunity whereby we have a campus being built over a major transport interchange and therefore enabling access to education is the key driver where we can increase the participation in the tertiary education for the people of Manukau and the broader Auckland area,” he says.

He says the institutes main campus at Otara was at capacity and the need for expansion space was another key driver.

Enrolment was currently about 7,500 equivalent full time students across around 165 programmes, Mr Quigg says.

MIT offers a range of qualifications from certificates to degrees and once the Manukau campus was established a masters and Ph.D. in business studies would be offered in conjunction with Australia’s Southern Cross university.