University Profiles

Foundation and growth

Monash University was established in 1958. Since the first students began their studies at the foundation campus in 1961, Monash has grown to become Australia’s largest university, enrolling more than 62,000 students. Monash is a member of the Group of Eight, the coalition of Australia’s most prestigious research-intensive universities.

The University of Warwick was founded in the mid-1960s. In the UK media league tables, it is consistently ranked in the top ten UK universities for
both research and teaching (seventh for research excellence in the last UK government research assessment exercise). Warwick is a member of the prestigious Russell Group of research-led UK universities.

Monash is ranked in the top one per cent of world universities according to the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2011, and is one of only seven Australian universities in the world’s top 200 – Shanghai Jiao Tong Academic Rankings of World Universities 2011.

Study

Award-winning educators and researchers lead Monash University’s ten faculties: Art Design and Architecture; Arts; Business and Economics; Education; Engineering; Information Technology; Law; Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences; Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences; and Science.

Academic work at Warwick is organised in four faculties – Arts, Medicine, Science and Social Sciences – and in many interdisciplinary research centres and institutes. Warwick was the first research-led University in the UK to give priority to widening participation, and has a variety of degree programmes specially to suit the needs of more mature students.

The Alliance believes that the education of our students, while retaining the distinctive features of each university, will be greatly enhanced through joint degrees and programmes, increased opportunities for student exchanges, both actual and virtual, and greater opportunities for study abroad in our overseas bases.

International perspective

Monash has an ever-growing global alumni network, today totalling more than 270,000 graduates. There are six Australian campuses, international campuses in Malaysia and South Africa, an education and research centre in Italy, a joint-research academy with the Indian Institute of Technology in Mumbai, and the Southeast University-Monash University Joint Graduate School (Suzhou, China).

Of Warwick’s 23,400 students, around one-third are international students and more than 180 nationalities are represented on campus. Warwick
alumni form a world-wide network of over 159,000 graduates. Warwick has a permanent base in Venice, where History and History of Art students
study during their Venice Term and which also hosts conferences, seminars and summer schools. Warwick has links with some 200 prestigious institutions around the world and is the only European member of a consortium chosen by New York City to create in New York a Centre for Urban Science Progress (CUSP).

For both Monash and Warwick, the Alliance represents a unique and far‑reaching commitment, different in both kind and in scale from any of their other international links. It is a new approach to partnership and connectedness that offers a model for research-led universities to meet future global challenges.

Research

Monash is committed to relevant and excellent research that creates an impact well beyond the academic sphere. The University has been a world pioneer in fields such as vehicle safety, in-vitro fertilisation, drug design (fighting influenza and malaria) and stem cell research. Today, research
specialisms include: health and wellbeing; future technologies; sustainable environments; resilient cultures and communities.

Warwick’s major areas of research strength are materials science; energy; manufacturing engineering; economics; business and finance; health – especially obesity, metabolism and diabetes; film and television; history. Like Monash, Warwick is determined to use its excellent research to make a real difference to problems confronting the world. It has recently repositioned its major areas of research strength around global challenges such as food security; global governance; innovative manufacturing; digital change; individual behaviour; international development; science and technology for health; connecting cultures. These draw on a major feature of Warwick research – interdisciplinarity which has resulted in the establishment of specialised research centres such as the Centre for Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE).

Clearly, Monash and Warwick have complementary research strengths, skills and capabilities. We have already identified several areas for
initial collaborative development – sustainable chemistry, tropical and social medicine, advanced materials and understanding cultures.