[19] Established by an Act of Parliament in 1958, the original campus was in the suburb of Clayton where the university was granted an expansive site of 100 hectares of open land.

[26] In its early years, it offered undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in engineering, medicine, science, arts, economics, politics, education, and law.

[31] By the late 1960s, several student organisations, some of which were influenced by or supporters of communism, turned their focus to Vietnam, with numerous blockades and sit-ins.

[32] In one extraordinary event that came to be known as the Monash Siege, students forced then Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser to hide in a basement at the Alexander Theatre, in a major protest over the Whitlam dismissal.

[36] Just over a decade later, it had 8 campuses (including 2 overseas), a European research and teaching centre, and more than 50,000 students, making it the largest and most internationalised Australian university.

At the same time, Australian universities faced unprecedented demand for international student places, which Monash met on a larger scale than most.

Monash announced its second Southeast Asian expansion in Indonesia as it officially obtained its operational license from the Ministry of Education and Culture on 1 December 2020.

A major building program has been announced to expand teaching facilities, provide student accommodation, and redevelop the shopping centre.

Peninsula campus also offers a range of courses including those from its historic roots with early childhood and primary education (during the 1960s and 1970s the campus was the State Teachers' College), and Business & Economics (since the merger of the State Teachers' College with the Caulfield Institute of Technology to create the Chisholm Institute of Technology in 1982).

Primarily, it hosts staff and students from Monash's other campuses for semesters in Law, Art Design & Architecture, History, Music, and Criminology as well as various international conferences.

In August 2015 Christopher Pyne, Australian Minister for Education and Training, officially opened the new Monash-IITB Research Academy Building in Mumbai, India.

[65] In 2012, it was announced that Monash had won a licence to develop a joint graduate school with Southeast University (Nanjing) in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province.

[67] The school offers master's degrees and PhDs in science and engineering, with an initial cohort of 500 students, building up to 2000 in the years to come.

[68] The Monash University, Indonesia opened its doors in October 2021, focusing on postgraduate programs offering master's degree and PhDs.

[71][72] The former Berwick campus of Monash University was built on the old Casey airfield in the south-eastern growth corridor of Victoria, Australia.

The town of Berwick has experienced an influx of people and development in recent times, which includes the new campus of Monash University.

[74][citation needed] This effort was short-lived, and Monash elected to transfer ownership of the campus to the Independent Institute of Education (IIE) South Africa in 2015.

[85] Some of the university's notable research achievements include the world's first IVF pregnancy, the first seatbelt legislation, the discovery of the anti-influenza drug Relenza (Zanamivir), the discovery that nerve stem cells could be derived from embryonic stem cells and the development of a single-use oral anti-malaria drug.

Located at the Sir Louis Matheson Library on the Clayton Campus, the Rare Books Collection consists of over 100,000 items, valued because of their age, uniqueness or physical beauty, which can be accessed by Monash staff and students.

The collection now consists of a range of items including photography, children's books, 15th- to 17th-century English and French literature, original manuscripts and pamphlets.

The Monash University Museum of Art (MUMA), since 2010 based on the Caulfield Campus, is the result of an initiative started in 1961, when the inaugural Vice Chancellor Louis Matheson created a fund for the purchase of artworks by then living Australian artists.

[121] The Australian Government's QILT[b] conducts national surveys documenting the student life cycle from enrolment through to employment.

[122] These surveys place more emphasis on criteria such as student experience, graduate outcomes and employer satisfaction[122] than perceived reputation, research output and citation counts.

In 2010, almost half of the top 5% of high school leavers chose to attend Monash – the highest of any Victorian university by quite some margin.

[135] Each campus has a range of sporting facilities used by students and staff, including football, cricket, hockey, soccer, rugby and baseball fields; tennis, squash and badminton courts; gyms and swimming pools.

For example, the Australia national association football team, the Socceroos, used the Clayton campus and trained on-site in South Africa for the 2010 FIFA World Cup.

[138][139][Note 2][140][141] The inaugural lecture was given by Bishop Eric D'Arcy, and others by Sir Edward Dunlop, Robyn Williams, Michael Tate, Max Charlesworth, and Veronica Brady.

[147] Notable graduates in politics include: Bill Shorten, former Australian Leader of the Opposition; Daniel Andrews, former Premier of Victoria; Richard Di Natale, Former Leader of the Australian Greens; Josh Frydenberg, former Treasurer of Australia; Adam Bandt, Leader of the Australian Greens; Anna Burke, former Speaker of the Australian House of Representatives; Boediono, former Australian Leader of the Opposition; Simon Crean, former cabinet member in the Rudd government and Gillard government; David de Kretser, former Governor of Victoria; Lim Guan Eng, former Minister of Finance of Malaysia; Sim Kui Hian, Deputy Premier of Sarawak; Robert Doyle, former Lord Mayor of Melbourne, Marlene Moses, United Nations Ambassador for Nauru and the Tanzanian ambassador Naimi Sweetie Hamza Aziz.

[148] Graduates in scientific fields include: Alan Finkel, Chief Scientist of Australia;[149] Ian Meredith, Global Chief Medical Officer and Executive Vice President, Boston Scientific;[150] Tim Flannery, scientist, ecology activist; Brad McKay, doctor, author and television personality; and Ranjana Srivastava, oncologist and author.

Graduates in other fields include: Peter Costello, businessman, political commentator and longest-serving Treasurer of Australia; Ian MacFarlane, economist, Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia (1996–2006); George Pell, Australian Cardinal of the Catholic Church; Anne Ferguson, Chief Justice of Victoria[151] and Marilyn Warren, 11th and first female Chief Justice of Victoria.