Bond University
private university in Australia
Bond University is Australia's first private not-for-profit university and is located in Robina on the Gold Coast, Queensland. Since its opening on 15 May 1989, Bond University has primarily been a teaching-focused higher education institution featuring a trimester timetable.
Bond comprises four main university schools and academic faculties, through which it offers a range of accelerated undergraduate and postgraduate degrees and programs, diplomas, and non-award programs.
History
Bond University was established and funded in 1987 by the chairman of Bond Corporation, Alan Bond, the president of the Japanese-based Electronics and Industrial Enterprises International (EIE), Harunori Takahashi and Dr Taro Tanioka, in a joint venture to manage the land and construction of the buildings of the university.
The university's buildings and surrounding land initially covered approximately 212 hectares and encompassed what was previously a pine plantation known as the Burleigh Forest. In the 1970s, Bond had obtained control of a number of pine plantations in the region, previously owned by the Savoy Corporation Limited and Gold Coast Cooperative Plantations Society Limited, and established a new company known as the Development Equity Corporation (DEC) to develop them.
DEC was managed by Brian Orr who, in 1976, put forward a proposal to the Albert Shire Council for a university at Gaven Forest. While this project did not proceed, a subsequent proposal made in 1986 to build a university at Burleigh Forest did gain traction. Orr discussed the matter with Bond and Peter Beckwith and recruited Jo Anne Cracknell to research the feasibility of venture.
On 3 July 1986, Bond decided to proceed with the project and his intention to build the university, then known as the Bond University of Applied Technology, was formally announced at the National Party of Australia conference on the Gold Coast by the Premier of Queensland, Joh Bjelke-Petersen on 17 July 1986.
“Bond University” enters the record as private university in Australia. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Bond, University and private can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 31, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q892188. VIAF identifies the subject as 148260509. The Library of Congress control number is no90007127. Authority coordinates are -28.074, 153.416. 4 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1989, 1987, 1976 and 1986.
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This entry incorporates text from “Bond University” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.