Prahran College
In the 1850s what was an as yet unnamed district of Melbourne south of the Yarra River was occupied on its hills by large estates, an extant survivor being Como House, served by a population of around 8,000 workers in cottages set in often swampy, flood-prone lower-lying areas.
[2] A 1 May 1854 meeting he attended with other businessmen of the district resolved to establish a Prahran Mechanics’ Institute, and from a fund-raising campaign a dedicated building was constructed in Chapel Street and opened in December 1856.
He proposed to his committee of management the employment of Thomas Levick, part-time art teacher at the Working Men’s College (now RMIT) and previously at the Castlemaine School of Mines, and he was duly appointed from 1 July 1908.
Evening courses were also provided in Cabinet-Making and Home Wood Craft; Shorthand; Typewriting; Dressmaking; Invalid Cookery; Ticket writing; Display; Millinery and Preparatory Apprentice Class.
The Committee on the Future of Tertiary Education in Australia was appointed on 27 August 1961 and via the Universities Commission reported to the Commonwealth Minister, Senator John Gorton.
This building was demolished fifty years later for the construction by the Andrews government of a 25 million 'vertical' secondary college, next to Melbourne Polytechnic and the National Institute of Circus Arts, and which opened in 2019.
Having realised his ten-year ambition for a ‘College’ but as a consequence of Council, staff and student disenchantment for which he had lately been the cause, and after having his position reclassified and advertised,[24][25] Warren resigned at the end of 1971.
His successor was Dr. David Armstrong (1941–2006), born in Coonabarabran, who came from Humber College, Toronto, where he was Dean of Creative and Communication Arts, and who was reported as being then, at 30 years of age, the youngest head of a tertiary institution in Australia.
[26] In his first ten weeks, he removed eight staff, some of whom were hired by Warren,[27] and appointed Victor Majzner, sculptor John Davis, and photographer Athol Shmith.
The Fashion Design course, with high demands on space and whose staff qualifications did not meet VIC requirements, was sacrificed to the budget cuts,[32] and to some predominating male prejudice.
It emerged into a period of societal and political change, with the end in 1972 of Australia's involvement in the Vietnam War and of conscription, into emerging socialist perspectives on civil rights and the women's liberation movement which swept a Federal Labor government, led by Gough Whitlam, into power after 20 years of conservative rule, which in 1974 abolished fees for universities and colleges of advanced education, opening up educational opportunities previously denied the underprivileged.
Armstrong’s interest in community colleges and his ambition to develop a multi-campus institution offering non-tertiary, part-time study advanced its activities outside the Diploma courses, and establishment of adult education for early school leavers and women especially.
He positioned Prahran as a 'comprehensive community college’,[33] ‘small and human’ running a with student-centred program that sidestepped status distinctions in tertiary education.
[34] The college presented a week-long programme for International Women's Day, and its A to Z Guide to Student Services[35] offered advice and information on a range of issues pertinent to the 1970s student, including finding housing and part-time work, abortion and child care, the latter provided in 1977 by Jean McLean and the Women's Action Group at Prahran Tech and later the College Union in the country’s first education institution childcare centre.
In a 1979 interview Community Programs Director Judi Kiraly represented Prahran's stance on anti-elitist community and adult education in saying that for too long tertiary institutions had felt they served only the cream of the adult learning population; "There is no educational reason why colleges and universities cannot maintain the highest standards of academic excellence and at the same time make room ... for the less academically inclined, or for those who want short, more adaptable programs", she said.
Tertiary Orientation Year in General Studies was an equivalent to today’s Victorian Higher School Certificate, was an entry qualification into PCAE and some other institutions.
The Prahran Art Foundation Year was administered by TAFE, and Adult Extension Courses were also important entry pathways into the college.
1976 subjects included Basic Photography, Basic Pottery, Representational Painting, Life Drawing, Intermediate Painting, Jewellery and Silver Craft, Weaving and Textile Art, General Sculpture, Technical illustration, Graphics and Design, Printmaking, Airbrush Techniques, Intermediate Photography, Intermediate Ceramics alongside Furniture Studies, Mandarin Chinese, Modern Greek, Indonesian, Hebrew and Yiddish, as well as Business Studies subjects like Small Business, Financial Management, Accounting and Book-keeping, Business Law, Customer Relations and Social Science subjects.
From 1976-1978 the General Studies Department produced an annual literary magazine Biala[38] edited by staff member Julian Citizen and Melbourne playwright and author, publisher and bookseller John Powers.
Staff agreed that community courses led to increased enrolments in the diploma; Prahran graduates Euan McGillivray, Warren Townsend and Maurice Hambur taught Photography and as John Cato noted in 1981, the community program generated more than a third of the 1981 intake for photography and provided training for staff who might eventually be employed by the college.
Prahran continued to develop and offer new courses and at the time had 767 full-time and 1192 part-time TAFE students, and 1350 in higher education, taught by 125 academic and 121 general staff and a budget of $5,097,000.
I foresaw the end of the heady days of creative initiatives, of working within a system with a degree of autonomy for an administration which trusted that the decisions we made were always in the interests of better educating aspiring artists.
By this time this enterprising culture was already being swamped by creeping regulation and "universification" and was replaced with stringency and accountability and justification and the imposition of a strange requirement of orthodoxy on the humanities.
However, from the early 1970s onwards, the department produced some of the country's most acclaimed practitioners, including Bill Henson, Carol Jerrems, Steve Lojewski, Rozalind Drummond, Janina Green and Christopher Koller among others.
