Melbourne Model Success

[ The University of Melbourne Voice Vol. 3, No. 2  12 May - 9 June 2008 ]

By Peter McPhee

The Melbourne Model is aligned with new and emerging educational structures around the world

What should be the broad outlines of the best education a university could offer early in this 21st century? Expectations are changing. Increasing numbers of students are looking for an education across several disciplines. Employers are looking for graduates with a breadth of outlook and strong generic skills. Professional bodies are concerned that traditional undergraduate courses are too short or constrained.

To meet these expectations, the University of Melbourne decided in 2006 to introduce a new curriculum structure – the ‘Melbourne Model’ – from 2008. The Model seeks to provide a rich undergraduate education characterised by both depth and breadth of disciplines. This will provide pathways to employment, to professional entry and development programs in graduate schools, and to research degrees.

The first intake of 4000 students into the Melbourne Model in March was the culmination of more than two years of decision-making, design and implementation, and represented one of the significant moments in the University’s history.

The suite of New Generation undergraduate courses – Arts, Biomedicine, Commerce, Environments, Music and Science – is the cornerstone of the Model. They are all new or redesigned courses. A maze of undergraduate double degrees is being replaced by sequential degrees: broader undergraduate degrees followed by rigorous graduate programs, such as those in Architecture, Education, Nursing, Social Work and Law.

The new undergraduate and graduate programs build on the excellence developed since 1853 in our existing degrees, and recognised by the University’s remarkable recent performance in the Learning and Teaching Performance Fund and Carrick Awards for Teaching Excellence.

This is a 10-year project. The University of Melbourne has 45 000 students enrolled in several hundred existing undergraduate and graduate programs. They are all strong degrees, developed across 150 years of meeting the needs of students and the wider community. Those programs which are being taught out will have special attention paid to ensure that they remain of high quality.

Student demand for the Melbourne Model has been strong. The New Generation Arts degree proved to be the most popular course in Victoria with strong demand enabling 1772 offers to be made. Next was the New Generation Science degree with 1012 offers. The University was clearly delighted to be able to make so many offers in the first year of the Melbourne Model, particularly because the clearly-in ranks for the New Generation degrees were set at or above the top 15 per cent of ENTERs within the state.

One aim of the Melbourne Model is to broaden the base of high-achieving students coming to Melbourne. The Access Melbourne special entry program provides access for students who have experienced educational, social or financial disadvantage. This year nearly 1120 students (20 per cent of the total) in these categories received offers to study at Melbourne.

Students in the new undergraduate degrees choose one-quarter of their subjects from outside their core program. More than 20 per cent are taking multidisciplinary University Breadth Subjects, and 30 per cent have selected language subjects as core or breadth, a remarkable statistic.

The Melbourne Model is aligned with new and emerging educational structures around the world, and there have been recent visits of high-level delegations from China, Thailand, Scotland, Ireland and elsewhere to study the Model and its implementation.

Melbourne Model changes at Melbourne are not confined to curriculum issues. With New Generation students taking subjects in more than one faculty, the University has had to re-think the way it provides advice to students. Students will need consistent, high quality advice and support whichever degree they are doing.

Students returning to campus in 2008 have noticed physical and spatial changes too, with new, purpose-designed student centres or ‘one-stop shops’ heralding a notable evolution in the ways in which we interact with our students on campus.

To return to the question with which this story began, therefore, my answer is that the Melbourne Model aligns well both with contemporary needs and the structures of international higher education. This is not to say that it is perfect – every system of education needs regular review and change – but it is an exciting university environment to be working in right now.



Professor Peter McPhee is University of Melbourne Provost