CQUniversity began because the Queensland Institute of Technology (Capricornia) in 1967, and after two years under the name of the University College of Central Queensland, in 1992 became a political candidate university named the University of Central Queensland. In 1994, it adopted the name Central Queensland University. In 2008, it became CQUniversity in recognition of the institutions' expansion beyond the Central Queensland region.
CQUniversity's antecedent institution, the Queensland Institute of Technology (Capricornia), was established in Rockhampton in 1967 as a regional branch of the Queensland Institute of Technology (Brisbane).
However, the primary steps to ascertain a university in Rockhampton were taken as early because the 1940s. In 1941, the Queensland Labor Premier, William Forgan Smith, introduced section 17 of the National Education Co-ordination and University of Queensland Amendment Act, which provided for the creation of university colleges outside Brisbane.[6] In 1944 and 1945, a series of Rockhampton delegations lobbied the Queensland government for a university college, but after the University of Queensland established a network of provincial study centres within the late 1940s the difficulty became dormant.
