Victoria University of Wellington

Victoria University is one of New Zealand’s oldest and most prestigious tertiary institutions with a proud tradition of academic excellence. Learn more about our 115 years of rich history.

Our vision is for Victoria University to be a world-leading capital city university and one of the great global-civic universities.

Victoria University of Wellington was founded in 1897. Prominent among the motives for Victoria’s establishment was the pressing need for the nation’s capital and its region to be supported by a public university. Today, Victoria University views this mandate of civic engagement in a global context and is determined to ensure that its local communities benefit from the University’s internationally respected academic excellence.

One of the distinctive features of Victoria is its ability to draw upon the national thinking and global mindedness of its capital city community. As a result, Victoria is in an ideal position to revitalise the civic university tradition with a national and international outlook; to redefine the ‘local-civic university’ as the ‘global-civic university’. In so doing, the University highlights its commitment to civil society and global citizenship, declares its determination to contribute to the resolution of international challenges and affirms its intent to prepare critically informed, globally confident, civic-minded graduates.

This international perspective reinforces rather than diminishes Victoria’s commitment to its locality—Wellington, New Zealand and the wider Asia-Pacific region1. This is the area of the world that sustains the University, its staff and students, and that increasingly defines its institutional identity and future. Victoria will employ its international academic leadership for the benefit of this region, helping to bind the global to the local and the local to the global.

This Strategic Plan outlines a 20-year path for Victoria University of Wellington that is unreservedly ambitious, in keeping with the confidence and aspirations of the University’s Council, staff, students, alumni and communities.

The plan commits the University to uphold a set of institutional values and enunciates a mission and purpose. Six primary strategies span Victoria’s Strategic Plan: academic emphasis, the quality of its research, teaching, learning and student experience, its focus on inclusivity, its engagement with its communities and the depth of the University’s intellectual influence in its region and beyond. A cluster of five enabling strategies covers priorities such as the employment of world-class scholars, the increased scale of the University, the effectiveness of its processes, the sustainability of its revenue and the communication of the quality of its research and teaching.

The development of this Strategic Plan has required us to pause to consider our shared future. We now envision Victoria University of Wellington as a world-leading capital city university; one of the great global-civic universities. It is time to set confidently about making this happen.

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