Opening Statement

There has, for some years, been a drive in most countries to increase participation in higher education while simultaneously trying to cut the cost of delivering it. This has put increasing financial pressure on universities, challenging their business models, and forcing them to closely scrutinize the programs that they offer.1 This is particularly the case for advanced degree programs such as Medical Physics that typically are more specialized and attract relatively low numbers of students and therefore less income. At the same time, there has been an increasing corporatization of the university sector with a strong focus on academic performance (at organization and individual levels), international ranking status, and improving financial performance and operating surpluses. If we focus on the enrollments, the CAMPEP (Commission on Accreditation of Medical Physics Education Programs, Inc) graduate program report in 2016 indicated that, in 2015, the number of graduate program entrants matriculating into the 49 accredited programs was 294 students.2 This averages less than 6 students per program, which is not going to generate the income required to make a program financially viable. Similar enrolment numbers exist in the six accredited medical physics programs in Australia. Of course, there may be a nonuniform distribution of student enrolments, with some large programs and some smaller programs, but I would argue that even the large programs are going to struggle to demonstrate financial viability if only student—fee‐based income is taken into account. I would therefore like to make the point that a large number of small programs being delivered on campus is not sustainable in the long term and traditional medical physics graduate programs are at risk in the near future. This would create a problem for the medical physics profession.

In recent years, a transformation has been going on in higher education with increasing use of digital technology to enhance the learning experience for students. For some years, our organization has been recording all lectures digitally and making them available for students through an online learning system (Blackboard, Inc, Washington D.C., USA). The online system also allows multimedia, online tutorials and quizzes, and discussion groups, to be used to enhance student learning through the use of blended learning techniques.3-5 Further research is required on the best way these digital technologies could be used in medical physics graduate programs.6, 7 The current generation of students expect and are comfortable with this form of blended learning, with many choosing only limited regular direct engagement with the lecturer or tutor.8 This online delivery creates an opportunity for increased inter‐university collaboration in the delivery of the required knowledge and content for the medical physics graduate student, with the extreme scenario being a single‐centralized graduate medical physics program, supported by academic and clinical faculty across a distributed network of universities and hospitals. This would be more cost effective, enable changes and advances relevant to the profession to be implemented in a more agile manner, and be more flexible for students in geographically remote regions.