Faculty History

Consolidation

The rapid growth of the Faculty's early years as enrolments increased, as staff numbers expanded to keep pace with them and as course offerings became more varied and, in some cases, more specialised, had come to an end by the mid-1970s. Thereafter the Faculty had to adjust to more straitened financial circumstances. There was still room for change and innovation, however, as new interests asserted themselves. The Centre of Migrant and Inter-cultural Studies was one example. The establishment of a graduate school of Librarianship was another. Others, outside the Faculty but of interest to it, were the Centre for Research into Aboriginal Affairs and the Monash Orientation Scheme for Aborigines (MOSA). Another was the re-organisation of the Faculty's Asian emphasis with the creation of the Monash Asia Institute under which the Centre of Southeast Asian Studies together with other Centres such as the Centre for Development Studies and the Centre for South Asian Studies carried on their work. Also outside the Faculty but of great interest to it was the nationally funded Key Centre of Australian Studies. New buildings enabled the development of the Centre for Performing Arts.

The Faculty's problems during this period were those of the tertiary scene in general. The creation of the Unified National System and the ending of the old binary system whereby a distinction had been maintained between universities and colleges of advanced education, posed problems for the Faculty as it had to adjust to a wave of amalgamations with neighbouring institutions. And towards the end of the 1990s it had to absorb significant reductions in the funds available to it. Some of its earlier creations fell by the wayside. It was no longer possible, for example, to maintain its Department of Classical Studies, nor was it possible to retain the departmental form of Faculty government with which it had started. Instead it has adopted a grouping of former departments within new Schools of Study, a system whose advantages have still to be tested.