KHMER Intellectuals: University of Melbourne

The University of Melbourne (UoM) is a public university located in Melbourne, Victoria. The second oldest university in Australia, and the oldest in Victoria, its main campus is in Parkville, an inner suburb just north of the Melbourne CBD. It is a member of Australia's "Group of Eight" lobby group, and of the informal group of Sandstone universities.

www.unimelb.edu.au

Melbourne University is ranked among the top universities, both in Australia and the world. The University is highly regarded in the fields of the engineering, arts, law, humanities, and biomedicine.

The University has around 44,000 students, who are supported by nearly 7,000 staff members (full or part-time). On 15 November 2005, the University announced a strategic plan entitled "Growing Esteem". The University will consolidate its three core activities—Research, Learning and Knowledge transfer—in order to become one of the world's finest institutions. In 2008, the University introduced the controversial Melbourne Model, a combination of various practices from American and European Universities, which will make the university consistent with the Bologna Accord, ensuring its degrees have international relevance.

History

The University was established by Hugh Childers in 1853 by an Act of the Victorian Parliament passed on Saturday 22 January, and classes commenced in 1855 with three professors and sixteen students. The original University buildings were officially opened by the then Lieutenant Governor of the Colony of Victoria, Sir Charles Hotham, on 3 October 1855. The first chancellor, Redmond Barry (later Sir Redmond), held the position until his death in 1880.

In the university's early days, an architectural masterplan was developed, establishing the intended prevailing building style as gothic revival. Early influential architects included Melbourne's own Joseph Reed, who was responsible for the design of many of the early campus buildings. Although the masterplan held as late as the 1930s, the 1950s saw the modernist style established as a new "house style" for the university, resulting in the mix of buildings seen today.

The inauguration of the University was made possible by the wealth resulting from Victoria's gold rush, and the University was designed to be a "civilising influence" at a time of rapid settlement and commercial growth (Selleck, 2003). The University was secular, and forbidden from offering degrees in Divinity - the churches could only establish colleges along the northern perimeter. The local population largely rejected the supposed elitism of its professoriate, favouring teaching of 'useful' subjects like law, over those they deemed 'useless' in the city's context, like Classics. The townspeople won this debate, and law was introduced in 1857, and medicine and engineering in the 1860s.

The admission of women in 1881 was a further victory for Victorians over the more conservative ruling council (Selleck 2003, p164–165). Subsequent years saw many tensions over the direction of the emerging University, and in 1902 it was effectively bankrupt following the discovery of a ₤24,000 fraud from the period 1886-1901 (the University's yearly grant was ₤15,000) by the University's Bursar, Frederick Dickson, who was jailed for seven years.

This resulted in a Royal Commission that recommended new funding structures, and an extension of disciplinary areas into agriculture and education.

By the time of World War I, governance was again a pressing concern. The Council, consisting of more businesspeople than professors, obtained real powers in 1923 at the expense of the Senate. Undergraduates could elect two members of the Council. In this period, the University tended to attract students drawn from affluent backgrounds, with a few opportunities for gifted scholarship students. The first Vice-Chancellor to be paid a salary was Raymond Priestley (1936) followed by John Medley in 1939.

After World War II, demand for Commonwealth-funded student places grew in Australia, and the University followed demand by becoming much larger and more inclusive.

The University celebrated its 150th anniversary in 2003. The University is the home of the Grainger Museum, celebrating the life and work of composer Percy Grainger.

Other campuses

The university has several other campuses located across Victoria.They are situated in Burnley, Creswick, Dookie, Werribee, and Southbank, Victorian College of the Arts. The university also has its interests in Goulburn Valley, particularly in the areas of rural health, agriculture and education. The university is a part-owner of the Melbourne Business School, the top business school in Australia in 2005 and 2006. The university has a node of the Australian Centre for Plant Functional Genomics

Reputation

Research produced by the Melbourne Institute in 2006 ranked Australian universities across seven main discipline areas: Arts & Humanities, Business & Economics, Education, Engineering, Law, Medicine, and Science.

In 2008, Times Higher Education Supplement ranked the University of Melbourne 38th in the world, falling 11 ranks and one place behind University of Sydney (which is ranked 37th) for the first time. It has been proposed that the fall in rank is a result of the newly introduced Melbourne Model, relating to worsening teacher-student ratios.

In 2007, Times Higher Education Supplement ranked the University of Melbourne 27th in the world. The University's opinion is that the significant move from the 22nd in 2006 to 27th in the year 2007 is due to different changes made in the methodology of the ranking. One of those changes is the switch from ESI Thomson research publication database to Scopus, which is a less-known database in Australia. This places the University of Melbourne behind four other universities in the region - Australian National University, Tokyo University, University of Hong Kong and Kyoto University.It also ranked 10 in Top 10 Employer Review, together with Bocconi University of Italy being the only two universities outside USA and UK in the category. The report also put the university 33rd for natural sciences, 17th for biomedicine, 21st for technology, 17th for social sciences, and 17th for arts & humanities.

In 2006, Times Higher Education Supplement ranked the University of Melbourne 22nd in the world. Because of the drop in ranking, University of Melbourne was behind four other universities in the region - Beijing University, Australian National University, Tokyo University and National University of Singapore. However, the university ranked in the top 8 in terms of peer review. The report also put the university 16th for technology, 7th for biomedicine, 7th for arts & humanities, 10th for social sciences, and 27th for science. In each of these categories, rankings improved compared with 2005. However, these positions are still lower than those of Australian National University.

In August 2006, Newsweek ranked the University of Melbourne 53rd in the world in its "The Top 100 Global Universities".

In 2005, the Times Higher Education Supplement ranked The University of Melbourne 19th in the world. At the time, this was the highest ranking among Australian universities and third highest in the region (behind Tokyo University and Beijing University). Furthermore, the university was ranked 8th for arts & humanities, 10th for biomedicine, 11th for social sciences, 18th for technology and 32nd for science.

In 2003, Shanghai Jiao Tong University ranked The University of Melbourne 92nd in the world. The position went up to 82nd in 2004 and 2005. The 2006 edition ranked The University 78th, up by 4 places.

Melbourne Business School's MBA course had been ranked 69th in the world in 2006 and 79th in 2007. It is the second highest ranked MBA course in Australia.

Faculties, Graduate Schools and Administration