The story
History
Foundations of the university
The University of Melbourne was established following a proposal by the Hugh Childers, the Auditor-General and Finance Minister, in his first Budget Speech on 4 November 1852, who set aside a sum of £10,000 for the establishment of a university. The university was established by an act of the Parliament of Victoria (16 Vict. No. 34) on 22 January 1853, with power to confer degrees in arts, medicine, laws and music. The act provided for an annual endowment of £9,001, while a special grant of £20,000 was made for buildings that year. The foundation stone was laid on 3 July 1854, and on the same day the foundation stone for the State Library. Classes commenced in 1855 with three professors, all of whom, like the founding University Chancellor, Redmond Barry, were from Ireland. There were sixteen students; of this body of students only four graduated. The original buildings were officially opened by the Lieutenant Governor of the Colony of Victoria, Sir Charles Hotham, on 3 October 1855.
A law school was established in 1857 at the Parkville campus, following which a Faculty of Engineering and School of Medicine were established in 1861 and 1862 respectively. The university's residential colleges were first opened on the northern aspect of the campus in 1872, divided between the four main Christian denominations.
The first chancellor, Redmond Barry (later Sir Redmond), held the position until his death in 1880. The inauguration of the university was made possible by the wealth resulting from Victoria's gold rush. The institution was designed to be a "civilising influence" at a time of rapid settlement and commercial growth. In 1881, the admission of women was seen as a victory over the more conservative ruling council. Julia 'Bella' Guerin graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 1883, and became the first woman to graduate from an Australian University.
1900s – 1970s
Early in the 1900s, the university expanded its offerings to more utilitarian courses. In 1901 the number of students enrolled at the University of Melbourne exceeded 500 students for the first time. The university established the Diploma of Education in 1903, following negotiations with the Victorian Education Department.
Despite the economic depression of the 1890s and the discovery of a significant fraud by a university registrar in 1901, the university continued to expand during this period. This growth included the construction of several buildings between 1900 and 1906. Such growth was facilitated largely through an increased government funding allocation, and the coinciding university led funding campaign. To accompany the training dentists received by the Melbourne Dental Hospital, a School of Dentistry was established to teach the scientific basis of dentistry at the university. Agriculture was established in 1911 following the appointment of the State Director of Agriculture as the first professor. During this period the university became a notable site for research, emerging as a leader in Australia. Following World War II the demand for higher education increased rapidly, and as a result became a transformative period for the university.
In 1940, the first issue of Historical Studies: Australia and New Zealand, now Australian Historical Studies, was published by the Department of History.
1980s – 2000s: Consolidation, expansion and the Melbourne Model
Expansion of the university increased significantly during the 1980s and 1990s, as the university amalgamated with a number of tertiary colleges. In 1988 the Melbourne Teachers' College was brought into the Faculty of Education, and the amalgamation lead to the formation of a distinctly new Faculty of Education. The College of Advanced Education was incorporated into the university in 1989. During this period, more students than ever before were attending the university. The university had expanded its student population to beyond 35,000 students. Such amalgamations continued into the 1990s, with the Victorian College of the Arts affiliation with the University of Melbourne in 1992. This increased the number of campuses for the University of Melbourne.
In 2001, the Melbourne School of Population Health was established, the first of its kind in Australia, and continued the growth of the university. Work at the centre involved contributions from many disciplines, ranging from the social sciences to epidemiology. Health fields such as Indigenous, women's, mental, sexual, and rural health have all been researched at the centre.
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In 2008, Vice Chancellor Glyn Davis introduced a major restructure of the university's curriculum. The new structure, named the Melbourne Model, replaced traditional undergraduate specialist degrees with a two-degree undergraduate/graduate structure. Over 100 undergraduate degrees were replaced with six generalist degrees, with students taking a general bachelor's degree before specialising in either a professional or research graduate course. The introduction of the model, influenced by North American academia and the Bologna process, was controversial among students and staff. Various groups, including trade and student unions,
academics,
and some students criticised the introduction of the new structure, citing job and subject cuts, and a risk of "dumbing down" content. A group of students produced a satirical musical about the model's adoption. A dean from Monash University rejected the model and argued it led to a reduction in student applications to the University of Melbourne. The University of Western Australia is the only other Australian university to adopt the structure. Davis also introduced reforms to university governance, making faculty deans more responsible for producing a financial surplus.
2010s: Further restructures and Davis' final term
Between 2013 and 2015 Davis introduced a wide-reaching restructure of the university's administration, labelled the Business Improvement Program, which led to the sacking of 500 administrative staff and some administrative responsibilities being transferred to academic staff. At the same time in the ten years to 2018 the university embarked on a large capital works program, spending $2 billion on new buildings across the university's campuses. The Melbourne School of Land and Environment was disestablished on 1 January 2015. Its agriculture and food systems department moved alongside veterinary science to form the Faculty of Veterinary and Agricultural Sciences, while other areas of study, including horticulture, forestry, geography and resource management, moved to the Faculty of Science in two new departments. In 2019, allegations of a toxic workplace culture within the Faculty of Arts were aired, with a number of senior staff leaving their positions. At the same time, there was controversy over the high salaries earned by the Vice Chancellor, with Davis earning $1.5 million in 2019, the most of any university head in Australia.
Like other Australian universities, an extraordinary growth in international students took place at the University of Melbourne and meant the university became increasingly reliant on revenue from its overseas student cohort.
Davis would finish his final term as Vice-Chancellor in 2018 with Duncan Maskell succeeding him on 1 October.
2020 – 2023: COVID-19 impacts, further expansion plans and workforce tensions
In 2020, on-campus teaching was limited to selected clinical placements as a result of social distancing restrictions required by the Victorian State Government in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The majority of teaching was moved to online delivery during the first semester. Like many other institutions and workplaces, university faculty members elected to use telecommunication platforms such as Zoom Video Communications, Microsoft Teams, or Skype to conduct live tutorials and provide interactive online learning experiences as a result of the suspension of face-to-face teaching during this time period.
In 2020 the university announced it was axing 450 staff in the institution's largest ever layoff of academic staff, despite a planned expenditure of $4.2 billion for capital works over the decade from 2020. Similarly, in semester two of 2021, the majority of teaching was once again moved to online delivery due to the outbreak of the Delta variant of COVID-19 and ensuing lockdowns in Victoria. In response the university announced further job losses, despite the university running an $8m surplus in 2020. Eleven subjects were cut as part of the savings measures including a number of specialist scientific subjects, a move criticised by Nobel Laureate Peter Doherty and others. The halting of international student arrivals as part of the Australian pandemic response was projected to cause a major loss in revenue for the university.
In 2019 and 2020, the university was also involved in wage theft and underpayment controversies towards its large teaching workforce of casual staff, and began repaying casual tutors for unpaid marking. The university was accused of owing Faculty of Arts teaching staff an estimated $6 million. In 2021 the Vice-Chancellor issued an apology for systematically underpaying staff, saying there was “a systemic failure of respect from this institution" towards casual staff that resulted in underpaying 1,000 staff members and requiring the university to pay back $9.5 million. This followed a campaign by the National Tertiary Education Union's University of Melbourne Casuals Branch, which engaged in a series of protests, including one outside the Vice Chancellor's residence. The university came under sustained criticism over the poor employment and financial conditions of its highly casualised academic workforce. During the 2010s, the university increasingly casualised its workforce, with reports that between 47 and 72 per cent of its 11,000 employees were on casual contracts by 2023.
In 2021 the State Government granted planning approval for a new campus for the university at the urban renewal precinct Fishermans Bend. The $2 billion campus, planned to open in 2026, will focus on engineering and forms part of a large capital works program by the university, which included the demolition of the Student Union Building and the creation of a new student precinct on the south-east corner of the Parkville campus.
In June 2021, a new speech policy was implemented with the stated purpose of protecting transgender individuals within the university while preserving freedom of speech principles for staff and students. In 2023, windows of the university's Sidney Myer Asia Centre Building were broken and the building was graffitied with a message accusing the university of contributing to an unsafe environment for transgender individuals.
In August 2023, all National Tertiary Education Union members who work in the Faculty of Arts, Melbourne Law School, the Victorian College of the Arts School of Art, student services, stagecraft and the library will start a-five to seven day strike. Union members are seeking a 15% increase in wages over the course of 3 years.
2024 – present: Student occupations and conclusion of Maskell's tenure
On 24 April 2024, students occupied the South Lawn of Parkville campus in solidarity with international, grass-roots, student-lead pro-Palestine movements. Concerns arose as students sought to keep the university accountable in its investments. More specifically, to disclose research and investment ties with Israeli Government companies, stocks, or bonds benefiting from the occupation of Palestine and the Gaza humanitarian crisis since 7 October 2023. Students occupied the Arts West building, "renaming" it Mahmoud's hall after a Palestinian student who was expected to commence his studies at the university died in the Gaza war.
On 29 April 2024, it was announced that Vice-Chancellor Maskell would step down from his position, partway through his second term, by early 2025.
Despite student efforts to comply with university policies while exercising their right to protest, on 14 May the university issued a breach notice, warning students of potential expulsions and faculty of disciplinary actions if protest activities continued. The notice also referenced the possibility of state law enforcement involvement, though no intervention occurred as the protests remained peaceful.
On the evening of 22 May, University of Melbourne for Palestine representatives announced that an agreement had been made with the university administration to disband encampments in exchange for disclosure of endowment investments and research ties with weapons manufacturers. However, as of 23 May, protesters and the university are at a stalemate, citing a lack of correspondence from the latter, with encampments remaining in place.
The university became subject to an investigation by the Office of the Victorian Information Commissioner into whether it breached privacy laws by using surveillance technology to identify students who participated in the protests. The Victorian Information Commissioner found that the university had breached student privacy by using the location data of students connected to the university's internet network to identify those involved in the Gaza war protests in May 2024. The university had used the data in disciplinary hearings against the students.
On 30 September 2024, it was announced that Emma Johnston would be appointed the university's next Vice-Chancellor, succeeding Maskell. Johnston was the first woman to hold the position in the university's history.
Medical History Museum
The Medical History Museum is located within the Brownless Biomedical Library at the university's Parkville campus. Exhibitions and educational programs are offered by the museum.
From Wikipedia’s article on University of Melbourne, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4