From the Vice-Chancellor

Named Australia’s leading university and one of the world’s top 30 by the Times Higher Education supplement, the University of Melbourne enjoys a unique place in the Australian higher education landscape.

This position means the University draws some of the best and brightest students, including high-achieving school-leavers from around the nation.

Many such students are invited to become Chancellor’s Scholars, scholarship holders whose position in one of the University’s revolutionary graduate degrees including the Juris Doctor (JD) and the Doctor of Medicine is guaranteed before they even begin undergraduate study. 

The particularly high calibre of the students accepted to study at the University of Melbourne though, is not the only aspect of each year’s student group which makes it unique. 

The University’s efforts in recent years to attract some of the world’s highest achievers to study at Melbourne are bearing fruit: in 2012, international acceptances were up 18 per cent from 2011, seeing almost 5000 international students begin studies at the University. 

This number of international students studying at the University and the wide range of countries from which they come makes for a deeper, richer and more global experience for the student body, its researchers and the wider University community.

This year, international students came from countries as diverse as South Korea, Canada, Chile and Pakistan. 

The University has also seen an almost 40 per cent increase in international students enrolling in postgraduate research programs, and its progress and retention rates are the best in the country. 

Melbourne also has one of the largest cohorts of graduate researchers in Australia with more than 4800 PhD, research doctorate and masters by research candidates. 

This success is partly the result of the University’s 2008 curriculum refresh, which aligns its programs with the best European and North American models and increases the number of postgraduate students and courses.

Students now complete a broad undergraduate qualification which includes deep study in their field coupled with subjects from outside their faculty, giving them the chance to explore a broad range of subjects and opportunities. They then go on to complete a graduate professional degree, a research higher degree or enter the job market. 

This global curriculum structure and the many highly intelligent and skilled international students who choose to study here as well as the local students they join at the University make for a unique educational experience: one where not only talented students are perpetually challenged by their peers as well as by their teachers, but who learn to work as part of international teams, not through theory but by virtue of being part of them. 

This emphasis on the international ensures students are not only prepared for a global future, but will join their global peers on the world stage to change the future for the better, as highly skilled graduates, and as effective global citizens. 

Glyn Davis
Vice-Chancellor