Professor Glyn Davis AC

Even in a drought, Melbourne remains impressive.

Its spacious parks and elm-lined boulevards, its four distinct seasons, its bustling CBD and Chinatown, and its latte-driven Lygon Street contrive to make it an exciting, cosmopolitan and highly-liveable city.

But Melbourne is more than that. It is also a ‘knowledge city’. Its powerful education and research capability is well-known and respected, both nationally and internationally.

Melbourne is home to a range of world-class higher education institutions. They cut a ‘swathe of scholarship’ across the city – from the Victorian College of the Arts on St Kilda Road, to the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in the city, to the University of Melbourne at the top of Swanston Street – offering a rich diversity of superb education programs.

There would be very little you could not study at any level in Melbourne to earn a globally-recognised qualification.

To someone who is fortunate enough to both live and work in the city of Melbourne, it is a pleasure to see the life the universities give to the city. The energetic presence of students around the city in the evenings and on weekends adds a vibrancy that is palpable.

Melbourne is a powerhouse of cutting-edge medical and biotechnology research and development, driven by some of Australia’s ‘big name’ medical and scientific research institutes – the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute, the Howard Florey Institute, the Bio21 Institute and so on in the ‘Parkville Strip’ precinct.

But Melbourne is also a place where contemporary cultural dynamism rubs shoulders comfortably with a treasury of Australia’s heritage architecture.

Outstanding education, research and culture…what more could anyone ask for in a city?