Alan Gilbert (Australian academic)

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Alan Gilbert (Australian academic) bigraphy, stories - Historians

Alan Gilbert (Australian academic) : biography

11 September 1944 – 27 July 2010

Alan David Gilbert AO (11 September 1944 – 27 July 2010) was a historian and academic administrator who was until June 2010 the President and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Manchester. During his tenure (1996–2004) as vice-chancellor of the University of Melbourne, he pushed for and established Melbourne University Private, a private university offshoot which ultimately failed. This, and his well-known controversial views on private funding of universities, led to Richard Davis in 2002 dubbing him the "doyen of economically rationalist vice-chancellors".

Professor Gilbert died on 27 July 2010 in hospital in Manchester, having suffered from a serious illness for the last few months of his life.

Early academic career

Gilbert graduated with a first class BA at the Australian National University in 1965, then took an MA in history and took a post as lecturer at the University of Papua New Guinea in 1967. He gained a scholarship at Nuffield College, Oxford and he was awarded a DPhil in 1973.

He returned to Australia as a lecturer at the University of New South Wales where he established an academic reputation as an historian working in the social, socio-economic and religious history of modern Britain and Australia.

He was appointed Professor of History in the Faculty of Military Studies in 1981. He was elected as a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia in 1990. He became Chair of the Faculty of Military Studies in 1982, and later Pro-Vice Chancellor of the University New South Wales (1988–1990). In 1991 he became Vice-Chancellor and Principal of the University of Tasmania at the time of the merger of the University with the Launceston CAE.

Family

Professor Gilbert was survived by his wife, Ingrid, whom he married in 1967, and their daughters, Michelle and Fiona. Alan Gilbert obituary

University of Melbourne

In 1996 Gilbert was appointed Vice-Chancellor of the University of Melbourne. He played the key role in establishing and subsequently developing Melbourne University Private Limited (MUP), a private university established to work alongside with the University of Melbourne, so as to circumvent regulations strictly limiting the money-making educational ventures of Australian universities. This was pursued despite numerous buildings on campus in serious states of disprepair and inadequate funding to allow lecture theatres to be heated. The venture was a financial disaster and was widely criticised by academics, politicians and the media. To rescue MUP, the University Council borrowed $150 million from the National Australia Bank and agreed to provide additional money from its investment reserves. The present University of Melbourne VC, Glyn Davis, announced the closure of MUP on 7 May 2005, citing no need for such a venture now that market ventures are permitted in the public university sector, and their plans to integrate most of MUP back into the public university. Gilbert declined to comment on the actions of his successor. Ironically the building originally intended for MUP, and now a part of the public university, has been named the Alan Gilbert Building.

Over the course of his tenure, Gilbert attracted the ire of both students and staff. For example, a staff strike took place on 22 October 1999 over lack of clarity over pay and conditions; administrative offices were occupied by students protesting introduction of fee-paying places in 1997, and again in April 2001, when there were 70 arrests.Australian Prime Minister’s web site

Off Course: From Public Place to Market Place at Melbourne University, claims that Professor Gilbert left the university a "quasi-privatised institution in the corporate mould".

University of Manchester

Gilbert left the University of Melbourne to be appointed President and Vice Chancellor of the new University of Manchester in England, an institution established in October 2004 by the merger of the Victoria University of Manchester and UMIST. He was quoted as saying he had "no plans for a private university of Manchester", although he is said to advocate performance-related pay, a position thought likely to put him in conflict with the university lecturers union, the UCU.