Extending the educational franchise: the social contract of Australia’s public universities, 1850–1890

Abstract

This article introduces the notion of the “educational franchise” of Australia’s public universities established in the mid‐nineteenth century. In his recently published study of the public university and social access in the United States, John Aubrey Douglass suggests that from the mid‐nineteenth century a social contract was formed between American public universities and their social and political constituencies: institutions open to all who could qualify for admission, offering a relevant curriculum and related closely to public schools systems. The idea of the “public university” was not unique to North America. Across the Pacific, the settler societies of Australasia were creating public universities from 1850 – a decade before the Morrill Act which provided the land grants for many public universities in the USA. The Australasian universities also emerged almost simultaneously with the establishment of secondary schools in each of the colonies. This article explores questions of social stratification, meritocracy, social class and gender with a strong focus on the interaction between universities and schools. The social contract in Australia was developed as a form of educational franchise first granted to urban males principally of middle‐class background, but of diverse social and religious origins, and then increasingly extended to those in the emerging public school system, those of rural and regional background, and then to women. The main focus of the article is on the University of Sydney, Australia’s first public university established in 1850. Drawing on an extensive student biographical database we have compiled, the article examines how the “educational franchise” operated in the colony of New South Wales in the period 1850–1890.