The University of Sydney (informally
Sydney University,
USyd or simply
Sydney) is the
oldest
university in Australia.
It was established in Sydney
in
1850. It is a member of Australia's "
Group of Eight"
universities that are highly ranked in terms of their research
performance. In 2009, the university had 47,775 students making it
the second largest (behind
Monash
University) in Australia.
Centred on the
Oxbridge-inspired grounds of
the university's main campus on the south-western outskirts of
Sydney's
CBD, the
university has a number of campuses as a result of mergers over the
past 20 years. The University of Sydney is a member of the Group of
Eight, Academic Consortium 21, the
Association of Pacific
Rim Universities (APRU) and the
Worldwide Universities
Network.
History
During 1848, in the
New South Wales Legislative
Council,
William Wentworth
proposed a plan to expand the existing Sydney College into a larger
university. Wentworth argued that a state university was imperative
for the growth of a society aspiring towards self-government, and
that it would provide the opportunity for 'the child of every
class, to become great and useful in the destinies of his country'.
It would take two attempts on Wentworth's behalf, however, before
the plan was finally adopted.
The university was established via the passage of the University of
Sydney Act, which was signed on 1 October 1850.
Two years later, the
university was inaugurated on 11 October 1852 in the Big Schoolroom
of what is now Sydney Grammar School
. The first principal was
John Woolley. On 27 February 1858 the
university received its
Royal Charter
from
Queen Victoria,
giving degrees conferred by the university rank and recognition
equal to those given by universities in the UK .
By 1859, the
university had moved to its current site in the Sydney suburb of
Camperdown
.
In 1858, the passage of the Electoral Act provided for the
university to become a constituency for the
New South Wales Legislative
Assembly as soon as there were 100 graduates with higher
degrees. This seat in Parliament was first filled in 1876, but was
abolished in 1880 one year after its second Member,
Edmund Barton, was elected to the Legislative
Assembly.
Most of the estate of
John Henry
Challis was bequeathed to the university, which received a sum
of £200,000 in 1889. This was thanks in part due to
William Montagu Manning (Chancellor
1878–1895) who argued against the claims by British Tax
Commissioners. The following year seven professorships were
created; anatomy, zoology, engineering, history, law, logic &
mental philosophy, and modern literature.
The main quadrangle
Under the terms of the Higher Education (Amalgamation) Act 1989
(NSW) the following bodies were incorporated into the university in
1990:
Prior to 1981, the Sydney Institute of Education was the
Sydney Teachers College.
Front lawns
The
Orange Agricultural
College (OAC) was originally transferred to the
University of New
England under the Act, but then transferred to the University
of Sydney in 1994, as part of the reforms to the University of New
England undertaken by the University of New England Act 1993 and
the Southern Cross University Act 1993. In January 2005, the
University of Sydney transferred the OAC to
Charles Sturt University.
The New England University College was founded as part of the
University of Sydney in 1938, and separated to become the
University of New England in 1954.
In 2001, University of Sydney Chancellor
Dame Leonie Kramer was forced to resign by the
university's governing body. In 2003,
Nick
Greiner, a former
premier
of New South Wales, resigned from his position as chair of the
university's Graduate School of Management because of academic
protests against his simultaneous chairmanship of
British American Tobacco
(Australia). Subsequently, his wife,
Kathryn Greiner, resigned in protest from
the two positions she held at the university as chair of the Sydney
Peace Foundation and a member of the executive council of the
Research Institute for Asia and the Pacific. In 2005, the Public
Service Association of NSW and the
Community and Public Sector
Union were in dispute with the university over a proposal to
privatise security at the main campus (and the Cumberland
campus.)
In
February 2007, the university agreed to acquire a portion of the
land granted to St John's College
to develop the Sydney Institute of Health and
Medical Research. As a Catholic institution, in handing over
the land St John's placed limitations on the type of medical
research that can be conducted on the premises, seeking to preserve
the essence of the College mission. This has caused concern among
some groups, who argue this could interfere with scientific medical
research. However this is rejected by the university administration
because the building is not intended for this purpose and there are
many other facilities in close proximity where such research can
take place.
University rankings
Sydney has been ranked amongst the top 100 universities in the
world by various sources. The UK’s
Times Higher Education
Supplement World University Rankings published in October
2008 ranked Sydney 17th in the world for
Arts
and
Humanities, 27th for
social sciences, 41st for
technology, 44th for
natural sciences and 27th for
biomedicine, confirming its 3rd highest position
in terms of its score on the Academic Peer Review (rankings for 5
major subject areas) among Australian Universities.. The University
of Sydney as a whole has been consistently named between 31st and
40th worldwide and 3rd nationwide (following ANU's 16-23rd and
Melbourne's 19-27th) from 2004 to 2007 in that same publication's
league table.
In addition, the University of Sydney has
also been constantly ranked between 97th and 150th worldwide and
3rd (following ANU's 50-59th and Melbourne's 73-82nd) among
Australian Universities from 2004 to 2008 by the Academic Ranking
of World Universities published by the Shanghai Jiao
Tong University
. This prominent position is also confirmed
by an annual ranking survey published by the Higher Education
Evaluation and Accreditation Council of Taiwan (HEEACT), which uses
a rigorous ranking methodology of evaluating the performance on the
scientific papers published by the university and has placed The
University of Sydney top 100 worldwide and second only to the
University of Melbourne within Australia since its publication in
2007.
In a
recent survey, Times
Higher Education Supplement worldwide ranking of universities
released in October 2009, the University of Sydney, tied with the
University of
Melbourne
, was placed 36th overall in the world, securing its
top-3 position with ANU and Melbourne among Australian
institutions.
Former Australian prime minister John
Howard graduated from Sydney University in 1961
Notable alumni
Throughout its history, University of Sydney alumni have made
significant contributions to
Australia and
beyond.
Australian leaders who have graduated from
the university include two governors-general, five
prime ministers, four
chief justices of the
High Court of
Australia
and twenty other justices of the
High Court. Sydney graduate Dr
H. V. Evatt, served as the first president of the
United Nations General
Assembly.
The university has produced three
Nobel
laureates and numerous renowned scientists. A number of notable
artists, writers, and entertainers have also graduated from the
university, including
Clive James,
Germaine Greer,
John Bell and the seven members of
The Chaser.
Organisation
The Physics Building houses the School
of Physics, and spans one side of the playing fields called The
Square.
Law Building houses the law faculty
and the law library.
The university comprises sixteen faculties:
The four largest faculties by
(2007) student
enrolments are (in descending order):
Economics and
Business;
Arts;
Health Sciences;
Science. Together they comprise
57% of the university's students. Each contains a student enrolment
over 5,000, and they are indeed the only such faculties. It is
notable that the Faculty of Economics and Business,
disproportionately to other faculties consists of about 49%
international students, whilst the Sydney-university-wide average
rate is about 22% (2008).
Endowments and research grants
One of several statues at the
university.
Tainted glass of McLaurin Hall
retelling Australian history.
By financial endowments, the University of Sydney is the second
wealthiest Australian university, with $1.259 billion endowed,
behind only the University of Melbourne with $1.29 billion endowed
and followed by
Monash University,
which has an endowment of $1.178 billion.
Latest figures show that the University of Sydney has received the
highest amount of research grants, which may demonstrate its
research competitiveness and the size of its students and staff
body. The University of Sydney also has the second largest (behind
Monash University) body of
students and researchers among Australian universities.
The University of Sydney secured more than $46 million in funding
in the 2007 round of National Health and Medical Research Council
(NHMRC) Project Grant, Capacity Building and Fellowship awards, the
largest allocation to any university in the state.The James Jones
foundation has announced the 2007 recipient of the bicentennial
award in university research linked to applied agricultural
economics. The award includes various grant and research
opportunities that may be taken up by both staff members and senior
students. Five of the university's affiliated medical research
facilities secured $38 million in the Australian government's 2006
budget, part of $163 million made available for a variety of
development and expansion projects.
Campus
Main campus
The main campus is spread across two inner-city suburbs of Sydney:
Camperdown and Darlington.
Originally housed in what is now Sydney Grammar
School, in 1855, the government granted the university
land in Grose Farm, three kilometres from
the city, which is now the main Camperdown campus. The architect
Edmund Blacket designed the original
Neogothic sandstone Quadrangle and Great Tower
buildings, which were completed in 1862. The rapid expansion of the
university in the mid-20th century resulted in the acquisition of
land in Darlington across
City
Road. The Camperdown/Darlington campus houses the university's
administrative headquarters, and the Faculties of Arts, Science,
Education and Social Work, Pharmacy, Veterinary Science, Economics
and Business, Architecture, and Engineering. It is also the home
base of the large Faculty of Medicine, which has numerous
affiliated teaching hospitals across the state.
The main campus is also the focus of the university's student life,
with the student-run
University of Sydney Union (known
as 'the Union') in possession of three buildings - Wentworth,
Manning and Holme Buildings. These buildings house a large
proportion of the university's catering outlets, and provide space
for recreational rooms, bars and function centres. One of the
largest activities organised by the Union is the Orientation Week
(or 'O-week'), centring on stalls set up by clubs and societies on
the Front Lawns.
The university is currently undertaking a large capital works
program (entitled
"Campus 2010 + Building for the Future"), with
the aim of revitalising the campus and providing more office,
teaching and student space. The program will see the amalgamation
of the smaller science and technical libraries into a larger
library, and the construction of a central administration and
student services building along City Road. A new building for the
School of Information Technologies opened in late 2006, and has
been located on a site adjacent to the Seymour Centre. The busy
Eastern Avenue thoroughfare has been transformed into a pedestrian
plaza, and a new footbridge has been built over City Road. The new
home for the Sydney Law School, located alongside Fisher Library on
the site of the old
Edgeworth David
and Stephen Roberts buildings, has been completed.
From
2007, the university will also use space in the former Eveleigh
railway yards, just to the south of Darlington
, for examination purposes.
The
campus is well served by public transport, being a short walk from
Redfern
Railway Station
and served by buses on the neighbouring Parramatta
Road
and City
Road.
Satellite campuses
Clock Tower on the eastern side of the
main quadrangle
- Mallett Street campus: The Mallett Street
campus is home of the Faculty of Nursing. As of 2005, the Faculty
no longer offers undergraduate Bachelor of Nursing programs. A new
Master of Nursing program (M.N) has been introduced, with its first
intake of students in 2006. Other hybrid programs such as the
Bachelor of Arts/Master of Nursing, Bachelor of Science/Master of
Nursing, Bachelor of Applied Science/Master of Nursing, Bachelor of
Sports and Exercise Science/Master of Nursing have also been
introduced.
- Cumberland campus: Formerly
an independent institution (the Cumberland College of Health
Sciences), the Cumberland campus in the Sydney suburb of Lidcombe
was incorporated into the university as part of the
higher education reforms of the late 1980s. It is home to
the Faculty of Health Sciences, which covers various allied health
disciplines, including physiotherapy, speech pathology, radiation
therapy, occupational therapy, as well as exercise science and
health information management.
- The Sydney Dental Hospital located in Surry
Hills and the Westmead Centre for Oral
Health which is attached to Westmead Hospital. See:
Sydney Faculty of
Dentistry.
- St James campus: This
building in Phillip Street is near the Supreme Court and was the
location of the Sydney
Law School
until 2009. The law school is now primarily
located on the Camperdown campus in a purpose-built facility, with
postgraduate programs still run from the St James campus.
- Orange Agricultural College: Located at Orange
in rural NSW, the Orange Agricultural College joined in 1994.
Orange campus was principally the domain of the former Faculty of
Rural Management; however other undergraduate courses from the
Faculties of Arts, Science, Nursing and Pharmacy were also taught
at Orange. The Orange Campus and the Faculty of Rural Management
were transferred to Charles
Sturt University in 2005.
- Camden campus: Located on
Sydney's southwest rural fringe, the Camden
campus houses research farms for agriculture and
veterinary science.
- The
Narrabri Plant Research Centre is located at Narrabri
, near the Queensland border.
- Taylors College: Located at
Waterloo,
New South Wales
, NSW, this college is operated by the university
for its Foundation Program, catering to international students
wishing to enter the university.
Facilities and services
University of Sydney Library
The
University of Sydney
Library consists of thirteen individual libraries located
across the university's various campuses.
According to the
library's publications, it is the largest academic library in the
southern
hemisphere
; university statistics show that in 2007 the
collection consisted of just under 5 million physical volumes and a
further 300,000 e-books, for a total of
approximately 5.3 million items. The Rare Books Library
possesses several extremely rare items, including one of the two
extant copies of the
Gospel of
Barnabas and a first edition of
Isaac Newton's
Philosophiae
Naturalis Principia Mathematica.
Museums and galleries
- Nicholson
Museum of Antiquities contains the largest and most
prestigious collection of antiquities in Australia. It is also the
country's oldest university museum, and features ancient artefacts
from Egypt, the Middle East, Greece, Rome, Cyprus and Mesopotamia,
collected by the University over many years and added to by recent
archaeological expeditions.
- The Macleay
Museum is named after Alexander Macleay, whose
collection of insects begun in the late eighteenth century was the
basis upon which the museum was founded. It has developed into an
extraordinary collection of natural history specimens, ethnographic
artifacts, scientific instruments and historic photographs.
- The University Art Collection was founded in
the 1860s and contains more than 2,500 pieces, constantly growing
through donation, bequests, and acquisition. It is housed in
several different places, including the Sir Hermann Black Gallery and the
War Memorial Art
Gallery.
Residential colleges
St. John College.
Quad of Sancta Sophia College
The university has a number of residential college and halls of
residence each with its own distinctive style and facilities. All
offer tutorial support and a wide range of social and sporting
activities in a supportive communal environment. Five colleges are
affiliated with religious denominations and while this gives each
of these colleges a special character, students of any denomination
or religion are eligible for admission. Unlike some residential
colleges in British or American universities, the colleges are not
affiliated with any specific discipline of study.
There is also a university-affiliated
housing cooperative,
Stucco.
Student organisations
Orientation week held at the
lawn.
Holme Building is one of the centres
for student activities.
- Student Representatives: Politically and
academically, undergraduate students are represented by the
Students
Representative Council and postgraduate students by the Sydney
University Postgraduate Representative Association (SUPRA).
- University of
Sydney Union: The University of Sydney Union (USU) is
the oldest and largest university union in Australia. USU provides
a range of activities, programs, services and facilities geared at
giving students the university experience. This involves delivering
a huge Clubs and Societies program, a varied entertainment program,
student opportunities, a range of catering and retail services plus
buildings and recreational spaces for students, staff and
visitors.
- Sydney Uni
Sport and Fitness: Formerly known as the Sydney
University Sports Union and Sydney University Women's Sports
Association, Sydney University Sport is one of Australia's largest
tertiary sporting bodies. It currently manages and administers 42
sport and recreation clubs, organises sporting and recreation
events, and offers student and non-student members a comprehensive
range of sporting facilities.
The SRC and Union are both governed by student representatives, who
are elected by students each year. Elections for the USU Board of
Directors occur in first semester; elections for the SRC President,
and for members of the Students' Representative Council itself,
occur in second semester, along with a separate election for the
editorial board of the student newspaper
Honi Soit, which is published by the SRC. The
elections are usually closely contested, and result in much of the
main campus being covered with chalk messages from the various
candidates. However, some complaints have been made in the pages of
Honi Soit and other publications about the organisations'
claims to represent the student body, citing perennially low voter
turnouts and the general apathy of much of the university
population to student politics.
The future of these organisations was believed to be under a shadow
with the passage of legislation implementing
voluntary student unionism in
late 2005. The legislation prohibited the compulsory collection of
fees from students, which had been the customary means of funding
student organisations, after the beginning of Semester 2 of 2006.
Although the organisations continue to be concerned about their
long-term financial viability, they have secured significant
funding from the university to partially make up for lost
revenue.
Miscellaneous
Statistics
Image:Usydincome.png|Sources of income for Sydney University,
1900-2003Image:USYD_enrolments.png|Enrolments at the University of
Sydney, 1880-2008Image:Usydfaculties.png|Proportion of enrolments
by faculty, 1900-2005
Gallery
Image:SydneyUniversity_InstituteBuilding_DarlingtonCentre.jpg|The
Darlington
CentreImage:SydneyUniversity_AndersonStuartBuilding.jpg|The
Anderson Stuart BuildingImage:Usyd easternave.jpg|Eastern Avenue on
main campus (prior to recent redevelopment)Image:Usyd School of
IT.jpg|The new School of Information Technologies
buildingImage:Usyd mainquad.jpg|View of main
quadrangleImage:Liquid_Nitrogen_Tank.JPG|The liquid nitrogen tank
outside the School of
ChemistryFile:Usydbadhamlibrary2009.jpg|Badham
LibraryFile:usydgreathallinside.jpg|Inside the Great
HallFile:usydgraffititunnel2009.jpg|Graffiti Tunnel during
campaigning period for 2009 student election
See also
References
Internet:
Literary:
- Williams, Bruce. Liberal education and useful knowledge: a
brief history of the University of Sydney, 1850–2000,
Chancellor's Committee, University of Sydney, 2002. ISBN
1-86487-439-2
External links
of the Institute of the Arts
, overlooking Port Jackson
. The college specialises in the fine
(visual) arts.
, a short distance from the Sydney Opera
House
. It became a faculty of the university in
the 1990s and incorporates the main campus Department of Music,
which was the subject of the documentary Facing the Music.
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