The story
Early history: 1950s
Established by the Monash University Act 1958 (No. 6184 (Vic)), the original campus was in the suburb of Clayton where the university was granted an expansive site of 100 hectares of open land. The 100 hectares of land consisted of farmland and included the former Talbot Epileptic Colony. The Tudor-style farmhouse built by the O'Shea family became the original Vice-Chancellor's House—now University House.
In 1961, the university enrolled 357 students at Clayton. By 1967, enrollment reached 21,000 students. In its early years, it offered undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in engineering, medicine, science, arts, economics, politics, education, and law. It was a major provider for international student places under the Colombo Plan, which saw the first Asian students enter the Australian education system.
The university was named after the prominent Australian general Sir John Monash. This was the first time in Australia that a university had been named after a person, rather than a city or state.
1970s onwards
From the mid-1960s to the early 1970s, Monash became the centre of student radicalism in Australia. It was the site of many mass student demonstrations, particularly concerning Australia's role in the Vietnam War and conscription. By the late 1960s, several student organisations, some of which were influenced by or supporters of communism, turned their focus to Vietnam, with numerous blockades and sit-ins. In an event later known as the Monash Siege, students forced then Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser to hide in a basement at the Alexander Theatre, in a major protest over the Whitlam dismissal.
In the late 1970s and 1980s, some of Monash's most publicised research came through its pioneering of in-vitro fertilisation (IVF). Led by Carl Wood and Alan Trounson, the Monash IVF Program achieved the world's first clinical IVF pregnancy in 1973. In 1980, they delivered the first IVF baby in Australia.
In the late 1980s, the Dawkins Reforms changed the landscape of higher education in Australia. Under the leadership of Vice-Chancellor Mal Logan, Monash expanded further. In 1988, Monash University had only one campus in Clayton, with around 15,000 students. Around a decade later, it had 8 campuses (including 2 overseas), a European research and teaching centre, and more than 50,000 students, making it the largest and most internationalised Australian university.
Expansion in the 1990s
In 1990, a series of mergers between Monash, the Chisholm Institute of Technology, and the Gippsland Institute of Advanced Education began. In 1991 a merger with the Victorian College of Pharmacy created a new faculty of the university. This continued in 1994, with the establishment of the Berwick campus.
In 1998, the university opened the Malaysia campus, its first overseas campus and the first foreign university in Malaysia. In 2001, Monash South Africa opened in Roodepoort, Johannesburg, the first foreign university in South Africa. The same year, the university secured an 18th-century Tuscan palace to open a research and teaching centre in Prato, Italy.
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An increase in international students and the university's expansion contributed to increased income throughout the 1990s. It has since ranked as one of Australia's top 200 exporters.
2000 onwards
In recent years, the university has been prominent in medical research. In 2000, when Alan Trounson led the team of scientists which announced to the world that nerve stem cells could be derived from embryonic stem cells, a discovery which led to a dramatic increase in interest in the potential of stem cells. It has also led to Monash being ranked in the top 20 universities in the world for biomedicine.
On 21 October 2002, Huan Yun "Allen" Xiang, shot two people dead and injured five others on the Clayton campus.
Since December 2011, Monash has had a global alliance with the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom.
In 2014, the university ceded its Gippsland campus to Federation University. On 15 July 2016, Monash confirmed that Federation University Australia would take over the operations of the Berwick campus prior to the end of 2018.
In 2019, the university sold its Monash South Africa campus to Advtech. Students who were on schedule to complete their degree on time would still receive a degree from Monash University after the sale. The reason for the sale was reported to be low profitability and low enrolment numbers. Prior to the sale, Monash University had sidelined the South African campus on its official websites and did not refer to it as a 'campus' unlike Monash Malaysia.
Monash announced an Indonesian campus in December 2020. The university plans to open its campus doors in October 2021, located in BSD City, Tangerang, Banten. Unlike Monash Malaysia, Monash Indonesia will focus on graduate studies including hosting the Institute for Advanced Research, supported by the Indonesian Scholarship and Research Support Foundation.
From Wikipedia’s article on Monash University, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5