[6] By late 1977 there were 250 students enrolled,[7] and the institution was an employer of career photographers including lecturers John Cato, videographer Phillip Ashton,[8] landscape photographer John Riches,[9][10][11] and Ted Keogh,[12] by tutors Philip Quirk,[13][14] Ian Cherchi and later Sandra Irvine who all trained at Prahran College,[15] and Jean-Marc Le Pechoux, founder/editor of Light Vision.
[11] In July 1978 the name had been changed to 'Photography Studies College' supported in marketing by the adoption of a distinctive lens-aperture logo (which, in 2020, it still uses) and more modern typeface, and it advertised full-time and part-time courses in "Photojournalism, Expressive Art Photography, Advertising and Fashion Illustration,[22] or Audio-Visual Production" with no formal academic qualifications required for entry into its summer and winter semester intakes of both school leavers and mature-age students.
[24] The college maintained a rural retreat on a property between Faraday and Chewton for weekend classes away from Melbourne,[25] and in the mid-80s, Hayne conducted photographic expeditions to the Middle East and China for groups of students.
[27] Staff member Sue Scales, interviewed for a 1985 advertising feature emphasised the size of the photography industry with an Australian national annual turnover of $1376 million and noted that the college had a "faculty of nine full-time and part-time lecturers...drawn from both the profession and the arts.
[29] By the end of the 1980s the college was in competition with five other public and private institutions, including ACPAC which was started by ex-PSC lecturers Perry and Riches, that were offering tertiary-level photography courses.
[30] Its annual graduate exhibition was attracting attention, and critic Gary Catalano in 1985 hailed a show of thirteen final year and recently graduated women students as "the best exhibition of photography I have seen for a long time", with special praise for "a concern with intimate experience" in works by Chris Barry, Claire Jackson, Stephanie Stead, Josephine Kuperholz and Seham Abi-Elias.
[34] During the 1990s Moss established the first formal credit transfer arrangement between a private vocational college and a university, a move supported by Dr Robin Williams,[35] then Dean of RMIT.