The Diploma of Town Planning has been designed to provide an opportunity for university study for people who may never have considered nor undertaken university study before. It also provides a pathway to further university study.

The Diploma is an introductory course suited to:

people who are looking at widening their employment prospects;

people seeking a career change and who are interested in entering a career in planning;

local government employees who wish to develop their skills and career prospects;

TAFE students who have completed a CERT IV (in any area);

people currently working in the planning system in a clerical/administrative capacity; and

unqualified planning assistants.
The program consists of eight units. It includes four compulsory first-year units, followed by four elective units. The Diploma will normally take people two years to complete, at a rate of two units per trimester. However the programme is flexible and people may complete at different rates.
The course is delivered online and can be undertaken from any location. There is no compulsory on-campus attendance, although some of the units in the program have non-mandatory intensive schools which provide an opportunity for face-to-face instruction and interaction with other students. The online learning environment and support provided for the course also provides many opportunities for interaction with lecturers and students.
Completion of the Diploma does not in itself lead to membership of the Planning Institute of Australia - although for anyone who would like to go on to further study, units passed toward the Diploma can be credited towards the Bachelor of Urban and Regional Planning at UNE. The UNE Bachelor of Urban and Regional Planning is fully accredited with the Planning Institute of Australia.
Course Aims
The Diploma of Town Planning seeks to provide a formal qualification at tertiary level in the area of urban and regional planning and is designed to broaden knowledge and provides a pathway for further university study.

Learning Outcomes
Upon completion of this course, students will be able to:

demonstrate a technical and theoretical body of knowledge in urban and regional planning, including deep understanding in some areas of the discipline;
demonstrate cognitive and technical skills to analyse and evaluate approaches to land-use and built-environment problems in a range of changing social, economic and environmental contexts;
demonstrate knowledge and skills to identify, synthesise and act on the diverse sources of information used by professional planners in the governance of different urban and regional contexts; and
demonstrate initiative and judgement in addressing particular planning problems, capacity to work independently and collaboratively, and ability to communicate specialised information via written, oral and graphical forms.