History of The University of Auckland

As early as 1862 an unknown writer, ‘J.G.’, proposed in Chapman’s New Zealand Monthly Magazine that a university should be established in Auckland. No one took up the suggestion. In the South Island, where the inhabitants were wealthier and keener on education, a university was established in Otago in 1869 and a college in Canterbury in 1873. In 1870, Parliament passed legislation to create the University of New Zealand as an examining body with affiliated teaching colleges. An Auckland politician, later Speaker of the House of Representatives, Maurice O’Rorke, tried to induce Parliament to place the University in Auckland, but he failed. The University of New Zealand had no fixed abode; its Senate met in the main towns in turn.

The citizens of Auckland did nothing to establish a college, but some so-called ‘university’ instruction was provided at the Auckland Grammar School. One student, Kate Edger, in 1877 became the first woman to graduate BA at a British university.

In 1878, O’Rorke was appointed chairman of a Royal Commission to report on higher education. It recommended that university colleges should be established at Auckland and Wellington. In 1882, the Auckland University College was set up by Act of Parliament. Thus the College was a creation, not of the citizens and local government, like those in the south, but of the State.

The applicants for the first four chairs, of Classics and English, Mathematics, Natural Science, and Chemistry and Physics, were interviewed in England by the New Zealand Agent-General and some of the most famous scientists and scholars of the day, including the great Benjamin Jowett of Balliol College, Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University. The men appointed formed an impressive group. The chemist, F.D. Brown, had studied both in France and Leipzig as well as London, and taught at Oxford and London. He had published a dozen papers. Algernon Phillips Thomas, the biologist, was a Balliol man who had discovered the life history of the liver fluke. The classicist, T.G. Tucker, was to become a famous scholar. When he left to go to Melbourne University in 1885, he was succeeded by Hutcheson Macaulay Posnett, an Irishman who had written several books, including one on comparative literature, what would now be called the sociology of literature, a subject which he is credited with inventing. The first professor of Mathematics was drowned shortly after he reached Auckland and he was succeeded by W.S. Aldis, who had been the senior wrangler at Cambridge and was the author of several mathematical books.

The College was formally opened on 21 May 1883 in the Choral Hall, then the largest hall in Auckland. The Governor, Sir William Jervois, announced that the College was to be a thoroughly democratic institution, open to all, women as well as men, and to all classes. He remarked that the first College building was a barn. It was, in fact, a disused courthouse.

When O’Rorke had first tried to secure a university for Auckland, in 1872, he had suggested housing it in Government House, left empty when the capital was moved to Wellington in 1865. This immediately aroused opposition in the newspapers, for many Aucklanders hoped that the capital – and the governor – would eventually return to Auckland. These conflicting ambitions lay at the basis of a recurrent feature of the history of the College, the great ‘site row’ which raged with particular violence in the years 1909-12, with the College trying to get at least part of the grounds of Government House while numerous citizens strongly opposed it. One result was that for years the College had no permanent site or permanent buildings. Instead, it acquired the disused Admiralty House and a building which had been the original Parliament House. In 1907, the Choral Hall was purchased.

In 1917, the College occupied the deserted Grammar School. Not until 1926 did it acquire its first permanent building, now The ClockTower Building, in Princes Street.

The College was poor: its statutory grant was for many years only £4,000 a year, while educational reserves were of such poor land that they brought in very little. It was small: there were 95 students in 1883; 156 by 1901. Many of the students had not passed the matriculation examination. Most of them were part-time, trainee teachers and law clerks, music students from 1888 onwards, commerce students by 1905. The College was dominated by the lay members of Council, especially by Sir Maurice O’Rorke, who was its chairman from 1883 to 1916. When Professor Aldis complained in 1892 that he had found the College stables occupied by O’Rorke’s son’s polo ponies he was dismissed! Despite a prolonged public controversy, Council would not reinstate him. Posnett also left, in 1891.

Some of the best professors departed. Most of the remainder grew increasingly out-of-date in their subjects. There was no system of sabbatical or study leave until the 1920s. The teachers simply handed on traditional knowledge: research was not expected and was rarely done. The staff lectured for very long hours. In some subjects research was impossible. For instance, the Library took no mathematical journals, so the mathematicians knew little about recent work. Some students, however, carried out good research, notably in Chemistry. In general, the students were given a good, traditional undergraduate education, but standards were not rigorous and had in some subjects declined by the 1920s.

In that decade and well into the 1930s the College was ruled by a Registrar, Rocke O’Shea, and a new Chairman (President after 1924), another former Cabinet Minister, Sir George Fowlds. Under their not always benevolent dictatorship some improvements were made. The first New Zealand graduates with postgraduate education abroad were appointed to the staff, notably the very able economist, Horace Belshaw, the philosopher, R.P. Anschutz, and the physicist, P.W. Burbridge. An excellent researcher, W.F. Short, was appointed as a lecturer in Chemistry.

Some advances were made in providing professional education. The only such education offered at the College was in Law, which attracted large numbers of students. The only ‘professional schools’ recognised by the University of New Zealand were Medicine at Otago and Engineering at Canterbury. In 1906, the College established a School of Mining, which covertly by degrees was turned into a ‘School of Engineering’. After fierce battles with Canterbury, fired by provincial rivalry, the Auckland School received University recognition for its teaching in the first two professional years. Students then had to go to Canterbury to complete their final year of education. In the course of this battle, in 1917, the College also began instruction in architecture.

During the depression of the early 1930s there was great disputation and rancour.

The temporary appointment of a lecturer in History, J.C. Beaglehole, later a world famous scholar, was terminated, his friends believed, because of a letter of liberal or radical tendency, to a newspaper, defending the right of communists to distribute their literature. This episode led to a Council election in which a liberal, Hollis Cocker, displaced a conservative. The College Council now adopted resolutions in favour of academic freedom and received the undeserved congratulations of the flower of the British academic establishment, including Lord Rutherford and Wittgenstein. At this time, in a modern terminology, the College ‘came alive’. For instance, some students, led by James Bertram, established a new literary journal, Phoenix, which was the focus for the first literary movement in New Zealand history: Allen Curnow, A.R.D. Fairburn, R.A.K. Mason and other writers, later distinguished, wrote for it.

The College received a great intellectual stimulus in 1934 when four new professors arrived, H.G. Forder, a very able mathematician, Arthur Sewell, a brilliant lecturer in English, a classicist, C.G. Cooper, and a new historian, James Rutherford.

The College had never had academic leadership. Cocker came to dominate it before and during the Second World War as much as had O’Rorke and O’Shea. But Council now appointed the first Principal (later Vice-Chancellor) K.J. Maidment. He came in 1950 and remained for two decades. He was a Classics don from Merton College, Oxford.

The 1950s was a very difficult period in the history of the College – The University of Auckland, as it was called from 1958 onwards. There was a further, fierce ‘site row’. Council wanted to move to a larger site out of town. The National Government in 1956 offered Government House to the College as a compensation for staying in Princes Street. Another ‘save Government House’ campaign followed. Both academic staff and the public were deeply divided over the issue, which was resolved in 1960: the University was to stay where it was.

The ‘site row’ held up the building programme for about six years, while student rolls rose rapidly, to 4,000 by 1959, with the result that there was bad overcrowding in quite inadequate buildings – army huts, for instance, were erected. Universities everywhere were expanding rapidly. New Zealand salaries were low and many able Auckland staff were recruited by Australian or other universities. Despite these problems, there was significant progress. New subjects were introduced: Geography, Anthropology, Maori Studies, Fine Arts. There was a new emphasis on staff research. Many of the new and younger academics became very active researchers, as could be seen in the growing lists of staff publications.

A general improvement in conditions was spearheaded by a committee, the Hughes Parry Committee, which reported on University conditions. Staff salaries were raised. For the first time the students were given fairly generous bursaries, which led to a rapid increase in the proportion of full-time students. The government grant to the University rose rapidly.

There was a massive university building programme, and over the next two decades the campus was transformed as one large building after another was erected: Fine Arts, Science, Engineering buildings, a Student Union, a new Library. A number of new subjects were introduced, including Political Studies, Art History, and Sociology. In 1968, teaching commenced in the new Medical School, which was the most important ‘new development’. The period of intensive new construction ended with completion of the new School of Music in 1986 and the Marae complex in 1988. A new precinct to the north of Waterloo Quadrant houses the Law School which moved into its new premises in 1992.

By the end of the 1960s Auckland had the largest University Library in the country, whereas it had usually been the smallest. Most of the credit for this belonged to Kenneth Maidment. One other change must be mentioned. In 1962, the University at last became independent, when the University of New Zealand was abolished.

When Dr Kenneth Maidment departed in 1970, there were 9,300 students. His successor, Dr Colin Maiden, was an Auckland engineer who headed a research division of General Motors in Michigan. One of the first things that struck him in Auckland was the paucity of student facilities. He pushed ahead to get them a theatre, a splendid gymnasium and recreation centre, and a large playing field ‘complex’. The entire administrative organisation, from faculties and committees to deputy vice-chancellors, was reformed. The academic boom of the 1960s continued well into the 1970s and several new buildings, like Human Sciences, were built and new subjects, like Management Studies and Computer Science, were introduced.

The 1970s brought numerous social changes: an increase in the proportion of Maori and Polynesian students and in the proportion of women as well as in the proportion of older students. Only in the years 1975-81 were the first two women professors appointed, Marie Clay and Patricia Bergquist. At a time of high inflation, the government grant to the University rose rapidly, to $95.2 million by 1989. Nevertheless there was a certain austerity by then, in a bleak economic climate, but after a century of growth the University seemed sufficiently strongly established in the community to withstand hard conditions.

Its position was indeed to be challenged in the following year. The wide-ranging restructuring of education undertaken by the Labour government encompassed the universities, and their autonomy and their identity were seen to be threatened. As a result of efforts by the universities, supported by alumni, some changes were secured in the Education Amendment Act 1990, but the University Grants Committee was abolished, the universities were placed directly under the Ministry of Education, and the composition of the Council was altered.

Anxious to respond to the demand for university education, the University offered courses at other tertiary institutions in Auckland and Northland. Acquiring buildings used for the 1990 Commonwealth Games village, the University began to develop a campus at Tāmaki, initially offering teaching in Commerce. It was obliged, like other universities, to introduce quotas for all first-year courses in 1992, breaking the historic policy of ‘open entry’.

The Tämaki Innovation Campus is now developing into a research-led, innovation campus with links to industry. The campus also has a postgraduate focus. Academic departments at Tämaki specialise in the areas of population health, biodiversity and biosecurity, information technology, psychology and speech science, materials and manufacturing, wine science, and sport and exercise science.

From the mid-1990s, the University introduced semesters, launched its first major fund-raising appeal and inaugurated its Summer School. It joined Universitas 21, an international network of research-intensive universities in Australasia, Asia, North America and Europe, as a foundation member.

Following the appointment of Dr John Hood as fourth Vice-Chancellor in 1999, alliances were forged with Auckland University of Technology and Manukau Institute of Technology (where bachelors degrees are offered in Teaching and Visual Arts). Nursing, Pharmacy and Software Engineering degrees were also introduced.

Online enrolment, the first at a New Zealand university, began operating in 2001. In August 2001, the University hosted with the New Zealand Government a major international conference on ‘Catching the Knowledge Wave’.

In 2010, the student roll was 40,977 (32,654 EFTS) and external research revenue totalled $218 million. The University of Auckland is host to four of the eight Centres of Research Excellence funded by the Government. In 2004 it was designated the country’s leading research university ‘on virtually any measure’ in the Performance Based Research Fund assessment carried out by the Tertiary Education Commission. In the PBRF assessment released in 2007, Auckland again emerged as the New Zealand university with the greatest overall strength.

The University of Auckland was placed 82nd in the Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) world university rankings in 2011, and it was again first in New Zealand in the Shanghai Jiao Tong University rankings in 2010. In QS subject rankings released in 2011 the University was consistently in the top 50 in the world.

Major new buildings have greatly enhanced the City Campus: the impressive Kate Edger Information Commons and Student Commons, the Engineering Atrium and greatly expanded library wing, and a seven-floor extension to the Science Centre which houses Computer Science and Software Engineering. A Fale Pasifika opened in 2004 and the Owen G Glenn Building, a large and striking new complex for the Business School, was completed in 2007.

The University of Auckland and the Auckland College of Education amalgamated in September 2004 to form a Faculty of Education. The new faculty, based primarily at the College’s campus in Epsom, was established with the aim of becoming New Zealand’s leading provider of teacher and social services education.

Dr John Hood was appointed Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford from October 2004. He was the first person from outside the 900-year-old university to take up the position.

Professor Stuart McCutcheon, formerly Vice-Chancellor at Victoria University of Wellington, started as Vice-Chancellor at Auckland in January 2005. Under his leadership a strategic plan setting out a vision of the University in 2012 was adopted in 2005. Progressive attainment of its objective of making Auckland a world-class university in New Zealand underpins annual planning and resource allocation. The appointment of a Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Strategic Development) responsible for International and Government Relations, Communications and Alumni acknowledges these pivotal relationships and focuses on maintaining the University’s national and international position. The University’s Campus Development Strategy envisages a major investment in infrastructure over the next decade. Major projects include: the redevelopment of the Grafton Campus to refurbish laboratories, upgrade plant and construct a new building due for handover in 2011; the student accommodation building at Elam which was completed in 2011 and will house 442 student beds; the refurbishment of Arts Building 206, also completed in 2011; and Science Building 303. The new South Pacific Centre for Marine Science, based at the Leigh marine laboratory and opened in July 2011, will foster marine research and educate visitors on the marine environment.

In 2008 the University marked its 125th Jubilee. Staff, students, alumni and friends reflected on and celebrated past achievements and looked forward to the future.

From 2010-15 Elam School of Fine Arts is celebrating a series of milestones including 60 years since Elam joined the University (2010), then first graduates (2012) followed by 125 years since the School was founded (2015). For the occasion Elam proposes to call the next six years the Elam Jubilee Years 2010-15.

A ‘Leading the way’ fundraising campaign has already exceeded its target of $150 million by 2012.