Description
This article is from the soc.culture.australian FAQ, by Stephen Wales
with numerous contributions by others.
5.4 "Classification" of Australian Universities
I thought that it might be more useful for those unfamiliar with the
Australian Higher Education Scene to try and classify the institutions
according to their history and aims in life. I have tried to keep my
personal biases out of the short descriptions, but they will no doubt
show through. I have also probably left a couple of the smaller
institutions off the list - with the rate of amalgamations and
institutional divorces, it is hard to keep track off all of them (for
example there may now be a University of Northern Rivers, which
resulted from U.N.E. breaking up). The order of the classes is NOT
meant to indicate any ranking of the universities. A very good source
of information about these institutions is the essay in the
Commonwealth Universities Handbook, which unfortunately I don't have
handy to check on all my details! Let me then apologise to anyone I
have left out or misrepresented in the list below.
To give you some idea of sizes, the largest Australian universities,
(Sydney, Melbourne, Queensland, New South Wales, Monash) have 20,000+
students. Government policy makes it undesirable for institutions to
have less than 5,000 students.
Ian (iand@hydra.maths.unsw.edu.au)
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Class 1. The large old institutions in the big cities. I think all
founded pre WWI, these institutions offer a full range of courses at
both undergraduate and postgraduate level, including medical and legal
degrees, and large research programs. Whether deserved or otherwise,
these universities still carry more prestige than others in their
state.
* Sydney, Melbourne, Queensland, Adelaide, Western Australia.
Class 1a. Old, like class 1, but in a much smaller city, somewhat
limiting its development.
* Tasmania
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Class 2. Large post WWII universities. Originally looked down on a
little (although the standards weren't questioned [JB]) these
institutions are now very similar to those of class 1. With those of
class 1, these institutions take the lion's share of government
research money and the good students.
* New South Wales, Monash
Class 2a. The Australian National University was set up after WWII to
offer more postgraduate education in Australia (while many
universities had PhDs, they were nothing like as popular as they are
now [JB]). Although it now teaches undergraduates as well, it is
still the home of the Institute for Advanced Study, which is devoted
to postgraduate education and research. It's range of courses is more
limited than those of U.N.S.W. and Monash.
* A.N.U.
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Class 3. 1960s-1970s suburban universities. These were set up to
cater for the rapid expansion in higher education in Australia that
took place at this time. As befitted the period, they were often set
up with unconventional academic structures (stressing
multidisciplinary courses for example), and with some programs not
offered elsewhere. Designed to be teaching and research institutions,
their full development is perhaps hampered by the difficulty they have
in attracting very good students away from the universities in classes
1 and 2.
* Macquarie, La Trobe, Flinders, Griffith, Murdoch
Class 3a. Regional universities of about the same age. Usually
beginning as sponsored colleges of one of the institutions from
classes 1 or 2. Perhaps more conventional than those in class 3, but
otherwise having similar strengths and weaknesses, and broadly
comparable on the prestige scales.
* Newcastle, Wollongong, New England, James Cook, Deakin (Deakin was a
bit different, in that it was a CAE (Gordon IT) which was converted
[JB]).
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Class 4. Institutes of Technology. Although most of these
institutions have now changed their names to "university", they began
by offering undergraduate education of a more applied nature than the
traditional universities. They gradually developed postgraduate
courses and research programs to a sufficient extent that the
distinction (in particular with respect to research funding) between
these institutions and the "lesser" universities was difficult to
sustain. Although these are now rather large and broad institutions,
they are still somewhat different in their aims to those of classes 1,
2 and 3.
* Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, University of Technology
Sydney (was N.S.W.I.T.), Curtin University of Technology (W.A.I.T),
University of South Australia (S.A.I.T.), Queensland University of
Technology (Q.I.T. and BCAE) Victoria University of Technology
(was Footscray I.T.), Swinburne University of Technology (was
Swinburne I of T)
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Class 5. Former Colleges of Advanced Education. Originally set up as
undergraduate institutions, offering a limited range of courses, such
as teacher training, nursing, accounting etc. In the Dawkins era
(mid-late 1980s), these were "encouraged" to band together to form
larger (but often quite geographically dispersed) institutions, so
that they could get a bigger share of the funding pie. Despite their
change of status, they are probably destined to remain as essentially
undergraduate teaching institutions for the forseeable future.
* Edith Cowan, Charles Sturt, Western Sydney, Canberra, Southern
Queensland, Central Queensland, Ballarat University College, Northern
Territory (perhaps misplaced here...it's geographical position makes it
a bit of a special case).
[MJ] I would put Northern Territory in Class 3a personally. It was
founded as a college of the University of Queensland and awarded UQ
degrees for a while. This is definitely the Class 3a pattern,
although it happened more recently than the others in the case of UNT.
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Class 6. Private Universities and Universities with Religious
Affiliations. During the late 1980's private universities made their
first appearance (all the above institutions are government funded).
The loudest of these in announcing its arrival was Bond University, in
Queensland. There still seems to be a degree of resistance to private
institutions in Australia - it is too early to tell how successful
they will be. Mainly funding considerations dictate that these
universities offer only a limited range of courses.
* Bond, Notre Dame, Australian Catholic University (although perhaps
this belongs in class 5)
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