Macquarie University

Macquarie University ( ) is a public research university based in Sydney, Australia, in the suburb of Macquarie Park. Founded in 1964 by the New South Wales Government, it was the third university to be established in the metropolitan area of Sydney.

Established as a verdant university, Macquarie has five faculties, as well as the Macquarie University Hospital and the Macquarie Graduate School of Management, which are located on the university's main campus in suburban Sydney.

The university is the first in Australia to fully align its degree system with the Bologna Accord.

History

20th century

The idea of founding a third university in Sydney was flagged in the early 1960s when the New South Wales Government formed a committee of enquiry into higher education to deal with a perceived emergency in university enrollments in New South Wales. During this enquiry, the Senate of the University of Sydney put in a submission which highlighted 'the immediate need to establish a third university in the metropolitan area'. After much debate a future campus location was selected in what was then a semi-rural part of North Ryde, and it was decided that the future university be named after Lachlan Macquarie, an important early governor of the colony of New South Wales.

Macquarie University was formally established in 1964 with the passage of the Macquarie University Act 1964 by the New South Wales parliament.

The initial concept of the campus was to create a new high technology corridor, similar to the area surrounding Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, the goal being to provide for interaction between industry and the new university. The academic core was designed in the Brutalist style and developed by the renowned town planner Walter Abraham who also oversaw the next 20 years of planning and development for the university. A committee appointed to advise the state government on the establishment of the new university at North Ryde nominated Abraham as the architect-planner. The fledgling Macquarie University Council decided that planning for the campus would be done within the university, rather than by consultants, and this led to the establishment of the architect-planners office.

The first Vice-Chancellor of Macquarie University, Alexander George Mitchell, was selected by the University Council which met for the first time on 17 June 1964. Members of the first university council included: Colonel Sir Edward Ford OBE, David Paver Mellor, Rae Else-Mitchell QC and Sir Walter Scott.

The university first opened to students on 6 March 1967 with more students than anticipated. The Australian Universities Commission had allowed for 510 effective full-time students (EFTS) but Macquarie had 956 enrolments and 622 EFTS. Between 1968 and 1969, enrolment at Macquarie increased dramatically with an extra 1200 EFTS, with 100 new academic staff employed. 1969 also saw the establishment of the Macquarie Graduate School of Management (MGSM).

Macquarie grew during the seventies and eighties with rapid expansion in courses offered, student numbers and development of the site. In 1972, the university established the Macquarie Law School, the third law school in Sydney. In their book ''Liberality of Opportunity'', Bruce Mansfield and Mark Hutchinson describe the founding of Macquarie University as 'an act of faith and a great experiment'. An additional topic considered in this book is the science reform movement of the late 1970s that resulted in the introduction of a named science degree, thus facilitating the subsequent inclusion of other named degrees in addition to the traditional BA. An alternative view on this topic is given by theoretical physicist John Ward.

In 1973 the student union (MUSC) worked with the Builders Labourers Federation (BLF) to organise one of the first "pink bans". Similar in tactic to the green ban, the pink ban was recommended when one of the residential colleges at Macquarie University, Robert Menzies College, ordered a student to lead a celibate life and undertake therapy and confession to cure himself of his homosexuality. The BLF decided to stop all construction work at the college until the university and the college Master made statements committing to a non-discriminatory university environment. MUSC was successful in engaging with the BLF again in 1974 when a woman at Macquarie University had her NSW Department of Education scholarship cancelled on the basis that she was a lesbian and therefore unfit to be a teacher.

After over a decade of service, the first Vice Chancellor Mitchell was succeeded by Edwin C. Webb in December 1975. Webb was required to steer the university through one of its most difficult periods as the value of universities were debated and the governments introduced significant funding cuts. Webb left the university in 1986 and was succeeded by Di Yerbury, the first female Vice-Chancellor in Australia. Yerbury would go on to hold the position of Vice-Chancellor for nearly 20 years.

In 1990 the university absorbed the Institute of Early Childhood Studies of the Sydney College of Advanced Education

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