I presented last week at a Transport Australia Society session on “The State of Transport Education”. The talk was two parts, the first about my take on where university education in transport is, and the second about the programs at the University of Sydney that aim to remedy the problems.

The state of transport education in Australia is getting better. New and revitalised transport engineering programs at the University level in Australia where none were before (e.g. the University of Sydney, UNSW, UTS). We have seen an import of major academics internationally, because Australia can’t find home grown candidates at the professorial level. Overall there has been a transition from pavements and geometric design to a broader inter-disciplinary outlook.

I use the Japanese Ikigai framework to discuss the field.

It is my perception that most transport engineering students lack love for the field, and have difficulty ascertaining and aligning with what the world needs, but are reasonably good at what they get paid for, have figured out how to get paid. This puts them in the southwest corner of the graphic, “Profession”. Planners in contrast are more likely found in the northeast corner “Mission”, at the intersection of what the world loves and what the world needs. Business students are in the southeast “Vocation”, and advocates in the northwest, “Passion”.  What we would like are whole students, transport(ation)ists, in a state of Ikigai.

We hope our new interdisciplinary Masters program will help students find a fusion of vocation, profession, mission, and passion that will live with them through their careers.

The details of the new Masters Degree are summarised in this attached Master of Transport Flyer, (feel free to share) the specific units (units=courses in American English) are listed below:

Core

ITLS	CIVL	PLAN/ARCH
ITLS5100 Transport and Infrastructure Foundations	CIVL5702 Traffic Engineering	ARCH9100 Introduction to Urban Design
ITLS5200 Quantitative Logistics and Transport	CIVL5703 Transport Policy, Planning and Deployment	PLAN9064 Land Use and Infrastructure Planning
ITLS 6102 Strategic Transport Planning	CIVL5704 Transport Analytics	PLANXXXX Capstone

Electives

ITLS	CIVL	PLAN/ARCH
ITLS6103 Sustainable Transport Policy	CIVL5701 Transport Networks	PLAN9063 Strategic Planning and Design
ITLS6301 City and Port Logistics	CIVL9704 Transport Informatics	PLAN9075 Urban Data and Science of Cities
ITLS6500 Decision Making on Mega Projects	CSYS5010: Introduction to Complex Systems	PLAN9073 GIS Based Planning Policy and Analysis
ITLS6107 Applied GIS and Spatial Data Analytics	CSYS5020: Interdependent Civil Systems	…

We also have an undergraduate “major” (major=minor to those from the US).

Transport Engineering Undergraduate Major

Year 2	Year 3	Year 4
CIVL 2700 Introduction to Transport	CIVL3704 Transport Informatics	CIVL5701 Transport Networks
		CIVL5702 Traffic Engineering
		CIVL5703 Transport Policy, Planning and Deployment
		CIVL5704 Transport Analytics