Wright College, University of New England (1956-1996) and the Wright Family

Abstract

In the corporate sense, the famed Armidale College began in the autumn of 1958, but for more than twenty years it was deemed to have been established by resolution of the University Council in August 1956, and then formally founded on 7 October 1957, with some twenty students in affiliation. This last date was also significant in a national sense, in that in the previous month there had been tabled in the Australian Federal Parliament the watershed 'Murray Report on Australian Universities', in which it was pointed out that 83% of the students of the University of New England were resident, but not as yet in colleges (p.133). The tiny University - which had only held its charter since 1955 and had, in 1956, but some 278 students in residence in the old 'Town Houses' and the wartime/post-war wooden 'top huts' - had bravely resolved to proceed as rapidly as possible to a fully collegiate system. Oxbridge was much in the minds of the University Council, although the Scottish antecedents of the University of Sydney were kept firmly in mind, particularly in the structure of first degrees.