The Adelaide-based institution, to be called Torrens University until an official name is chosen, will run courses from 2013 and expects 50% of its cohort to be international.

As with other Laureate universities, it will give students the chance to study parts of their degrees at Laureate’s 58 other online and campus-based universities around the world.

Some say Laureate is taking a gamble by entering the Australian market at this point, as it continues to reel from a two-year slump in international enrollment. Post-Knight Review measures to increase numbers do not come into effect until 2012, leaving Australia’s resurgence to pre-2009 levels of growth far from assured.

The company may also struggle to find domestic students willing to pay between AU$65,000 and $85,000 for their degrees – three times the fees asked at public universities – at a time when the cost of living in Australia is rising. International students are due to pay 5-10% on top of this.

However Laureate is confident the Australian market will bounce back and says its target of annual enrollments of 3,000 within 10 years, starting from a modest first cohort of 200, is “truly achievable”. It hopes to break even by its fourth year of operation and has agreed to a staggered initial outlay of $30 million to guarantee the venture.

“The past decade has been an explosion of growth for Australian higher education and I believe that the next decade will be as well,”” Laureate’s founder and chief executive Doug Becker told The Australian, adding that he viewed the lull in international recruitment as temporary.

Not only will students be drawn to studying semesters at Laureate universities in 25 countries, but they will also have airfares included in tuition fees and the chance to complete degrees in two as opposed to three years.

Laureate will be able to recruit from the 670,000 students studying across its worldwide network, with the company’s Managing Director (Asia Pacific), Michael Mann, saying the positive response to studying in Australia “was overwhelming.”

Not only will students be drawn to studying in 25 countries, but they will also have airfares included in tuition fees

“Laureate is envisaging a truly global education experience… If a student enrolls in a Bachelor of Asian Business, he or she will spend the first semester in Adelaide, the second in Japan, the third in Adelaide, the fourth in China, the fifth in Adelaide and the sixth and last in India. The entire class will travel,” said Mann.

Torrens will be Australia’s third private university after Bond University in Queensland and Notre Dame in Western Australia which were established in 1989, and expects to charge comparative fees. Like all Laureate universities it has Bill Clinton as its honorary chancellor.

The venture has already ruffled feathers in Australia’s academic community, with some local universities suggesting its approval has been fast-tracked before a new Canberra agency, the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA), starts regulating the sector in January.

Tertiary education minister Chris Evans has denied the claims, saying that Canberra’s outgoing premier Mike Rann had wanted approval awarded before he stepped down this month. TEQSA has also said that Laureate’s approval is subject to an ongoing review by the agency.

Laureate will canvass south Australians and Laureate students overseas about what to name the university this year.