Saturday, August 29, 2015

Monash University

Monash was established by an Act of the State Parliament of Victoria in  as a result of the Murray Report, which was commissioned in by then Prime Minister Robert Menzies to establish the second university in the state of Victoria. The university was named after the prominent Australian general Sir John Monash. This was the first university in Australia to be named after a person, rather than a city, region or state.


One of the lakes at the University's main campus, Clayton
The original campus was in the south-eastern Melbourne suburb of Clayton (in what is now the City of Monash). The first University Council, led by Monash's first Chancellor Sir Robert Blackwood, selected Sir Louis Matheson, to be the first Vice-Chancellor of Monash University, a position he held until  The University was granted an expansive site of hectares of open land in Clayton.[The  hectares of land consists of the former Talbot Epileptic Colon
From its first intake of students at Clayton on  March , the university grew rapidly in size and student numbers so that by  it had enrolled more than  students since its establishment. 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.

In its early years of teaching, research and administration, Monash was not disadvantaged by entrenched traditional practices. Monash was able to adopt modern approaches without resistance from those who preferred the status quo. A modern administrative structure was set up; Australia's first research centres and scholarships devoted to Indigenous Australians were established.

From the mid- to the early , Monash became the centre of student radicalism in Australia.[1was the site of many mass student demonstrations, particularly concerning Australia's role in Vietnam War and conscription.By the late , several student organisations, some of which were influenced by or supporters of communism, turned their focus to Vietnam, with numerous blockades and sit-insIn one extraordinary event that came to be 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  and , some of Monash's most publicised research came through its pioneering of in-vitro fertilisation (IVF). Led by Professors Carl Wood and Alan Trounson, the Monash IVF Program achieved the world's first clinical IVF pregnancy in , they delivered the first IVF baby in Australia.] This eventually became a massive source of revenue for the University at a time when university funding in Australia was beginning to slow down.

In the late 1980s, the Dawkins Reforms changed the landscape of higher education in Australia. Under the leadership of Vice-Chancellor Mal Logan, Monash transformed dramatically. In Monash University had only one campus in Clayton, with around students.Just over a decade later, it had 8campuses (including  a European research and teaching centre, and more than 5students, making it the largest and most internationalised Australian university.


Expansion of the University began in  with a series of mergers between Monash, the Chisholm Institute of Technology, and the Gippsland Institute of Advanced Education. In  a merger with the Victorian College of Pharmacy created a new faculty of the University. This continued, with the establishment of the Berwick campus.[citation needed]

In 1998, the University opened the Malaysia campus, its first overseas campus and the first foreign university in Malaysia. In , Monash South Africa opened its doors in Johannesburg, making Monash the first foreign university in South Africa. The same year, the University secured an th Century Tuscan Palace to open a research and teaching centre in Prato, Italy.

At the same time, Australian universities faced unprecedented demand for international student places, which Monash met on a larger scale than most. Today, around 30% of its students are from outside Australia Monash students come from over  different countries, and speak over 90 different languages. The increase in international students, combined with the University's expansion, meant that Monash's income greatly increased throughout the  and it is now one of Australia's top exporters

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