University of Melbourne Degree: A Campus Woven into the Life of a City
The University of Melbourne is a public research university located in Victoria, Australia, founded in 1853. Its Parkville campus is near to the city’s cultural and professional life – within walking distance of central Melbourne. The campus is a collection of historic buildings and modern research facilities, a testament to an institution that has time and again reinvented its surroundings and its academic mission.
Changes are still visible in the Old Quadrangle. It was built in 1854 and its first buildings housed classrooms, administration and apartments for professors and their families. The campus is situated on Wurundjeri land, connecting the physicality of the university to a history that predates the university itself. Stonemasons working on the Quadrangle were involved in the campaign for an eight-hour working day in 1856, linking the site to an important episode in Australian labor history.
Teaching began in 1855 and the Bachelor of Arts included classics, mathematics, science and modern languages. Melbourne was secular in its constitution, and its founding professors were required to teach and examine. This approach set it apart from several British university models available at the time.
The Melbourne Curriculum: Specialisation and Breadth
Gradually university education was made more accessible. In 1883, Melbourne awarded a Bachelor of Arts to Bella Guerin, who became the first woman to graduate from an Australian university. Other developments took the institution beyond its classrooms. Melbourne University Press was established in 1922, and a temporary campus at Mildura helped accommodate increased enrollments after the Second World War.
Getting a University of Melbourne Degree encompasses a academic geography that extends way beyond Parkville. Southbank brings music and visual and performing arts to Melbourne’s Arts Precinct. Dookie is a working farm that provides agricultural teaching and research, while Burnley focuses on horticulture and green infrastructure. These provide different discipline-based settings for practical work, experimentation and observation.
Its teaching structure too is marked by a distinctive pattern. The Melbourne curriculum offers undergraduate specialization and opportunities to study outside a student’s main area of study. Graduates may enter employment or pursue further educational and professional study. Breadth subjects enable students to link their interests across disciplines rather than just focusing on one subject in their degree.
Apart from formal teaching, the university has collections of rare books, works of art, botanical specimens and historical records. These materials support research and object-based learning and museums and galleries make parts of the university’s holdings of cultural objects accessible to the public. They add to the institution in Melbourne another role: the preservation of knowledge and its availability outside the enrolled student community.