"Cultivating the worst form of sectarianism": conviction and controversy in the establishment of denominational colleges in Australian universities, with particular reference to the University of Queensland and to the centenary of St Leo's College.

Abstract

The University of Queensland and the University of Western Australia were the last two of Australia’s six universities established by World War II. Both were established early in the 1900s, with Queensland’s university declared a “people’s university” that was to be different from the earlier universities of the 1800s – it was to be “a thoroughly unsectarian university” with “no residential colleges”. It was established on the site of the old Government House, but soon denominational colleges were set up in association with it, but close to rather than on its campus. Two leading Brisbane churchmen at the time, Catholic Archbishop James Duhig and Anglican Archbishop St Clair Donaldson, were strong supporters of both the University and of establishing church colleges, and St John’s (Anglican) College was set up in 1912 and St Leo’s (Roman Catholic) College in 1917. Emmanuel College (Presbyterian) also opened in 1912, and Kings College (Methodist) in 1913. These and other colleges would later be located on the University’s campus after it moved to St Lucia in the late 1930s. Much of the denominational colleges’ development at UQ reflected the debates, issues and concerns around religion and the university in the setting up of colleges at the earlier universities, and in the establishment of the ‘second wave’ of universities and colleges in Australia after World War II. With a particular focus on St Leo’s College UQ, which celebrated its centenary in 2017, this paper seeks to affirm the distinctive role that such colleges can play in Australia’s increasingly corporate universities, and in the context of enormous growth in commercial partnership and provision of student accommodation.