Education Universities

History Of Melbourne Universities

Published at 03/22/2012 20:12:04

Introduction

Melbourne universities are located in Melbourne, Victoria and Australia. It is one of the oldest universities and one of the most prestigious university in the whole of Australia. It was founded way back in 1853, and has its main campus in Parkville. The university was set up by Hugh Childers, auditor general in November 4, 1852. During those days, the university was set up with the goal of providing degrees in law, medicine, arts and music. The foundation stone of the Melbourne universities was laid on third, July 1854. The first classes started the very next year. At that time, they only had four professors and 20 students.

History

During the early days of Melbourne universities, the style of the building was intended to be that of Gothic revival. Joseph reed was the architect during that time. He designed almost all the buildings in the campus. By the year 1950, the style of the building was modified and had a more modernist style. During the time of World War II, there were a lot of controversies regarding the governance of Melbourne universities. The council only had very few professors and was mostly filled by business people. At this time,most of the admission was biased towards children from wealthy family and those kids, who were really gifted and talented had less chance to get admission to Melbourne universities. The first Vice Chancellor of the Melbourne universities was Raymond Priestley in the year 1936. He was followed by John medley in the year 1939.

Features

In the year 2003, Melbourne universities 150th anniversary was celebrated. This university is a symbol of civilization and was created out of the gold rush in Australia. During the period of gold rush, therewas enormous amount of wealth in this region. To keep up with Sydney, which was bigregion and with the goal of establishing a stronger community in Victoria, Melbourne universities was setup. Melbourne universities were always a very secular university. They never had any clergy in their staff or churches had any influence on them. During the initial days they only had four teachers. These four teachers were very talented and intellectually gifted. Melbourne universities always were famous for paying very high salaries to all the faculties and staff.

Tips and comments

Melbourne universities are one of the oldest universities and were established before the prestigious universities of England, except Cambridge, Durham, Oxford and London. It is also, one of the oldest universities in the whole of the British Empire. The foundation of Melbourne universities was the result of three men, namely Col auditor general Hugh Childers, Redmond Barry and lieutenant governor Charles La Trobe. Women were admitted to Melbourne University only after 1881. Legislation waspassed to reform the Melbourne universities, in the year 1881. Only after that, women were admitted to this university. This decision was made after a long period of bitter battle. Even after that, women were only admitted to the Department of arts and only after few years, they were admitted to other departments, including medicine. The first woman graduate was Bella Guerin in the year 1883.

Most importantly period of the city was after 1945 at the end of the Second World War. After the war, there was a rapid growth in demand for higher education, and this transformed Melbourne universities to an elite university in the whole of Australia.

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