The Faculty of Arts - A Brief History
The Bachelor of Arts was the first degree to be offered at the University of Melbourne when teaching began in 1855. Despite the foundational role of the arts at Melbourne, the Faculty of Arts did not officially come into being until 1903, following abortive attempts in the previous decades. As the basis of a 'gentleman's education', the liberal arts defied categorization as a discrete field of knowledge, and the Arts degree provided a basis for a broad range of teaching at the University, including science and engineering. Teaching of the Classics particularly underpinned this foundational role. Faculties of Law and Medicine were established in 1873, yet power struggles in the University administration disrupted moves towards establishment of a Faculty of Arts. Even when an Engineering Faculty was established in 1888, Arts remained without a similar structure. It was only with James Barrett's renewed proposal for a faculty in 1902 that Arts was granted its distinct administrative form and powers.
Education remained a component of the Faculty of Arts at this time, and with the enrolment of teachers in preparation for their vocation, Arts grew to become the largest faculty at the University by 1912. Originally housed in the Quadrangle, Arts grew too large for its quarters, and eventually, in 1921, the Faculty moved to the new Arts/Education building (now Old Arts). In 1923 Education separated from Arts with the establishment of its own faculty, but numbers in Arts continued to grow, particularly as the number of women attending the University rose. In the 1930s the range of teaching in the Arts Faculty had also grown. The teaching of modern European languages received significant support, while the establishment of a Department of Political Science under William Macmahon Ball in 1939 represented a significant development in the academic and public life of the Arts Faculty. The expansionist trend within Arts received strong support from the University administration, especially the Vice-Chancellor, John Medley, after the Second World War. Eight new chairs were established in the decade after the war, including Psychology, Political Science, Fine Arts and Germanic languages. The Faculty of Arts enjoyed a period of particular strength within the University, and increasingly outside it, as the research profile of the Faculty expanded. R. M. Crawford's History Department was notable in this period for producing historians of particular eminence, and highlighting the centrality of the humanities in the expansion of higher education in post-war Australia.
Numbers continued to grow in the 1960s, and the Faculty faced the increasingly familiar problem of meeting those numbers with facilities and teaching staff. Honours and postgraduate numbers particularly swelled at this time and, again belatedly, a new building (Medley) was constructed to house departments that had outgrown their lodgings. Severe financial pressures in the early 1970s obliged Arts, among all other faculties, to tighten its belt. Despite these difficulties, the 1970s also saw the beginnings of a long-term trend in the introduction of less rigid structures for teaching, and the development of more thematic and specialised subjects, facilitating expansion into new fields of inquiry. Today the fruits of this trend continue to be realized in the structure and offerings of the Faculty of Arts. The diversity of Arts at Melbourne is represented by more than twenty departments, schools, and research centres. Over seven thousand students now conduct their studies across more than seventy areas of study, with a strong research base in its postgraduate community.
For a current summary of the Faculty's activities view the Welcome from the Dean web page.