Their universities, in particular--the universities of Melbourne, Sydney and Canberra-- have always been rivals academically, ruling over Australian academia in a splendid triumvirate.

In competing with one another, the universities have often developed different areas of strength in the same field. In China studies, for instance, Sydney is strong in classical literature, Canberra in history and Melbourne in contemporary literature.

In a similar type of comparison, Melbourne students are fond of asking visitors, "Don't you feel that Melbourne is rather artsy?" Indeed, Australians consider Canberra the country's political center, Sydney its commercial hub and Melbourne its cultural capital.

Melbourne is one of Australia's oldest cities, and the university, founded more than 140 years ago, has marched right along with the city's history. Founded during the early period of British colonization, the university has inherited more than a few English traditions.

Situated around the main campus are a number of student dormitories, called colleges as in Britain, built in the style of mediaeval cloisters, with neat lawns, courtyards, chapels, and libraries of their own. The faculty members and staff reside there too, living and eating with the students in one big family.

The relations between graduate students and their professors are about the same as in Britain, too. Graduate students conduct "independent research," with the choice of topic and the pace of work completely up to them. They are given pointers by their advisors only if they take the initiative to ask for them. It's not that the professors are stingy with their knowledge--they're afraid of misleading their students with too much interference. As for time limitations, there are none, and so overseas students often call themselves "cows let loose in the pasture." Many students from Taiwan, used to being pushed by their teachers, say they had a hard time finding a "direction" when they first arrived.

'The professors treat you as a researcher just like them," says Tzeng Wen-hsien, a graduate student in environmental engineering. There seems to be little pressure on the surface; in fact, with little outside help to rely on, students have to be that more demanding of themselves to succeed.

The undergraduate program is also in the European mold, divided into the two forms of small-group discussions and large-scale lectures, although graduate students generally concentrate on their research instead of going to class. To cover all the basic knowledge that undergraduates need in three years, professors lecture at a hectic clip in halls packed with hundreds of students. "Students wander in and out and papers fly back and forth, just like at big lectures in Germany," a graduate student who has been to Europe says in comparison.

Although the European atmosphere is evident everywhere on campus and professors from England have called the University of Melbourne a little London, it would not be correct to say that the university has failed to sever its umbilical cord with Britain even after nearly a century and a half.

In fact, one of the university's founding guidelines was to "avoid repeating the mistakes of British universities."

One of the first independent faculties at the university was the school of medicine, founded in 1862, during the period of colonization, when noxious diseases were still rampant. Dr. Anthony Brownless, a member of the university council at the time, warned of the danger of following the polarized system of medical education in England, where hospital schools provided good practical but poor theoretical training, while the universities produced doctors who were cultured but inexperienced.

To head the school, the council brought in Dr. G. B. Halford, a distinguished professor and researcher from England. He led the faculty for 30 years, and his brilliant teaching ensured that talented medical students no longer invariably wanted to study in England.

The faculties of arts, law and medicine, which were founded the earliest, steadily developed under the objective of achieving a style of their own while not being outdone by their counterparts in Europe.

With the arrival of the 20th century, as Australia's abundant agricultural, industrial and mineral resources were increasingly exploited, more and more investment was devoted to applied research in related areas, Before 1960, when Melbourne was still the only university in the state of Victoria, faculties and departments with a practical orientation flourished in particular.

The mining industry, for instance, demanded experts in mineralogy and civil engineering; the development of animal husbandry meant higher salaries and more job opportunities for veterinarians; and the growth of agriculture increased the quantity and quality of research in plant diseases and crop blight prevention.

During the 1960s, the university advanced even more rapidly. The fact that Australia had escaped devastation in the two world wars and the countries of Europe and Asia kept importing raw materials as they rebuilt their economies made postwar Australia an economic powerhouse second only to the United States and Canada.

A nation's strength affects the level of research in it, and a number of first-rate European professors and researchers came to Australia at the time "all on their own hook." Robert King, a senior lecturer in the Chinese department in the Faculty of Arts, calls the 1960s Melbourne's, and Australia's, golden age. The Chinese department, founded then, used some of its ample funding to acquire the entire personal library of the famous Swedish sinologist Bernhard Karlgren.

Many new fields of research that have only recently come to the fore were initiated at Melbourne at the time. Biotechnology, for instance, got an early start there, and the university now has several world-class research teams in what is currently one of the hottest areas in modern science.

The Eliza Hall Institution, located in the school of medicine, is a world-renowned center of biotechnology research, where scientists from Germany, Britain and the U.S. have gone year after year to engage in research.

Among all the departments, the school of medicine, with the most solid foundation, remains the most outstanding. One of the professors is Dr. Barksten, who is chairman of the International Cardiology Association and has presided over the treatment of some 20,000 cases of heart disease.

In organ transplants, the school of medicine can take credit for the world's first simultaneous heart-and-lung transplant. And the liver transplants and spinal injury treatment at the Austin Hospital are world class in standard.

The school's various departments have developed equally in strength. Two professors in the pharmacology department have won a Nobel prize, and another has been awarded for research in neuroimmunology. Their influence has produced the opposite of a vicious cycle, where research has flourished even more. Abundant sources of new medical information, circulating freely, provide an environment for constant progress.

The wealth of the 1960s, added to its past foundation, did indeed make the University of Melbourne a splendid place.

But Australia's location in the southern hemisphere, far away from academic strong holds in Europe and North America, has still had an effect on the university to some extent, the most basic being the lack of a strong source of pressure from competitors. "We don't spend as much time in the laboratory as others do," admits Cheng Hsiao-ling, a doctoral candidate in the botany department engaged in plant genetic engineering research, shaking her head.

As other countries recovered from the destruction of the war, Australia found them catching up to it in many fields of research.

In addition, the leisurely lifestyle and the rather slow-paced development of industry and commerce engendered by Australia's reliance on exports of raw materials mean that it is hardly in the same league with the advanced countries of Europe, Japan and North America in the fields of science, engineering and business management.

Economic stagnation has naturally had its effect on educational funding. At Melbourne, obscure departments like Oriental languages were the first to bear the brunt of the blow: faculty members have left and have not been replaced, facilities are not being renovated, the budget for books has been cut. . . . In the university's annual report last year, the vice-chancellor took the unusual step of directly criticizing the national government for neglecting the importance of academic research and not providing enough funding.

Over the past year or two, the federal government has demanded that a few smaller institutions be merged with the university, and the university itself is planning to amalgamate the originally independent faculties of medicine and dentistry. Although it is said that amalgamation will enable facilities to be used jointly and spur technical interchange, it is basically also a means of coping with a shortfall of money.

Students from economically thriving countries like Japan and Taiwan can't help sensing the university's impoverished look. Huang Li-an, who graduated from National Chinghua University and is now a doctoral candidate at Melbourne's school of medicine, says that the facilities at some academic institutions in Taiwan already surpass those of Melbourne. "When I first came here, I couldn't believe they were so backward!" She says the students and teachers know they are gradually falling behind schools in the advanced countries in terms of equipment, but their attitude is they prefer the limited funding to be invested in people and information--in software, so to speak.

The inadequacy of its equipment is some-what redeemed by the fact that the university can share the use of the facilities of the many national-level research institutions that are located in the city as the capital of Victoria.

Wu Hsin-hsing, who is head of the financial and economic news section at the Commercial Times and who earned a doctorate in political science at the university, believes that Melbourne is the finest environment for study in all of Australia. The city itself, renowned for its parks and its culture, is enough to provide for a diverse and cultivated learning experience.

Environmental engineering student Tzeng Yen-hsien has already learned quite a bit from the city's urban planning. The traffic system, the sewer system and the large-scale parking lots . . . all of it was thoroughly thought out decades in advance with later development in mind. "Economic recession may mean a lot of difficulties for the school," he says, "but there are still all kinds of things here that overseas students can learn from and take away with them."

[Picture Caption]

A campus sculpture with an Australian flavor--koalabear shaped.

(Left) A number of British traditions from the days of colonization are preserved at the university. The dormitory in the picture is modeled after the colleges of the English system.

The flagging performance of the country's economy has crimped academic funding, adversely affecting the expansion and renovation of lab equipment. The picture shows Taiwan student Huang Li-an doing an experiment at the university.

(Left) Melbourne is renowned as a city of culture, and the university is steeped in culture too. This is the school museum.

Beneath this ordinary- looking campus square is a parking lot that can hold over a thousand vehicles.

The Chinese department was founded in the 1960s. This is Robert King, an expert in Ch'ing dynasty history, who was hired from Taiwan to teach at the time.

The quiet, peaceful campus provides places everywhere for students to re lax and savor "spiritual sustenance."

(Left) The specious cafeteria, which provides healthy, inexpensive food, is a popular congregating place for overseas students.

A campus sculpture with an Australian flavor--koalabear shaped.

（Left） Melbourne is renowned as a city of culture, and the university is steeped in culture too. This is the school museum.

The flagging performance of the country's economy has crimped academic funding, adversely affecting the expansion and renovation of lab equipment. The picture shows Taiwan student Huang Li-an doing an experiment at the university.

Beneath this ordinary- looking campus square is a parking lot that can hold over a thousand vehicles.

The Chinese department was founded in the 1960s. This is Robert King, an expert in Ch'ing dynasty history, who was hired from Taiwan to teach at the time.

（Left） The specious cafeteria, which provides healthy, inexpensive food, is a popular congregating place for overseas students.

The quiet, peaceful campus provides places everywhere for students to re lax and savor "spiritual sustenance.".