Алан Дэвид Гилберт: Австралийский историк и университетский администратор.

Australian historian

Alan David Gilbert AO (11 September 1944 – 27 July 2010) was an Australian historian and academic administrator who was president and vice chancellor of the University of Manchester between 2004 and 2010. During his tenure (1996–2004) as vice chancellor of the University of Melbourne, he pushed for and established Melbourne University Private, a private university offshoot which ultimately failed. This, and his well known controversial views on private funding of universities, led to Richard Davis in 2002 dubbing him the "doyen of economically rationalist vice chancellors".

Gilbert graduated with a first class BA at the Australian National University in 1965, then took an MA in history and took a post as lecturer at the University of Papua New Guinea in 1967. He gained a scholarship at Nuffield College, Oxford and he was awarded a DPhil in 1973. He returned to Australia as a lecturer at the University of New South Wales, where he established an academic reputation as an historian working in the social, socio economic and religious history of modern Britain and Australia. He was appointed professor of history in the Faculty of Military Studies in 1981. He was elected as a fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia in 1990. He became chair of the Faculty of Military Studies in 1982, and later pro vice chancellor of the University of New South Wales (1988–1990). In 1991 he became vice chancellor and principal of the University of Tasmania at the time of the merger of the university with the Launceston CAE.

In 1996, Gilbert was appointed vice chancellor of the University of Melbourne. He played the key role in establishing and subsequently developing Melbourne University Private Limited (MUP), a private university established to work alongside the University of Melbourne, so as to circumvent regulations strictly limiting the money making educational ventures of Australian universities. This was pursued despite numerous buildings on campus in serious states of disrepair and inadequate funding to allow lecture theatres to be heated. The venture was a financial disaster and was widely criticised by academics, politicians and the media. To rescue MUP, the University Council borrowed $150 million from the National Australia Bank and agreed to provide additional money from its investment reserves. The present University of Melbourne VC, Glyn Davis, announced the closure of MUP on 7 May 2005, citing no need for such a venture now that market ventures are permitted in the public university sector, and their plans to integrate most of MUP back into the public university. Gilbert declined to comment on the actions of his successor. The building originally intended for MUP, and now a part of the public university, has been named the Alan Gilbert Building. Gilbert attracted the ire of both students and staff. A staff strike took place on 22 October 1999 over lack of clarity over pay and conditions; administrative offices were occupied by students protesting the introduction of fee paying places in 1997, and again in April 2001 when there were 70 arrests. In the book Off Course: From Public Place to Market Place at Melbourne University, Gilbert was accused of making the university a "quasi privatised institution in the corporate mould".

Gilbert was married to Ingrid, whom he married in 1967. They had two daughters, Michelle and Fiona. Gilbert died on 27 July 2010 in hospital in Manchester following a serious illness for the last few months of his life.

1973: The Growth and Decline of Nonconformity in England and Wales, with special reference to the period before 1850: an historical interpretation of statistics of religious practice. Thesis (D. Phil.) University of Oxford (Nuffield College). 1976: Religion and Society in Industrial England: church, chapel and social change, 1740–1914. London: Longman
1977: Churches and Churchgoers: patterns of church growth in the British Isles since 1700. Oxford: Clarendon Press (with Robert Currie & Lee Horsley)
1980: The Making of Post Christian Britain: a history of the secularization of modern society. London: Longman
2004: The Idea of a 21st Century University. (Audenshaw Papers; 208.) Torquay: Hinksey Network (8 page pamphlet)