A Place Apart: The University of Melbourne, Decades of Challenge

A Place Apart charts the fortunes of the University of Melbourne during a period of great change – the decades between 1935 and 1975 – when Australia’s older universities had to respond to the demands of a changing society and evolving government policies.

Implicit in academic thinking throughout the century has been the idea that a university is a special institution, ‘a place apart’ with obligations that stretch beyond its local society to the international world of intellectual discovery and critical thinking. That ideal has survived, though with difficulty, at the University of Melbourne during the decades of challenge.