Why the final act in Margaret Gardner’s current job is the perfect end

“She’s nickel-tough. But she’s unafraid of revealing vulnerability. She cares – and she doesn’t care who knows it,” says Jackson, who inherited Gardner as chair when she came into the role at UA in 2018.

It will be a fitting end of a life writ large on the higher education stage in Australia that Gardner’s finale duty as vice-chancellor of Monash will be to officiate at the very first graduation for students at its brand-new Indonesian campus on Friday.

That first graduation – and Gardner’s final one – will include 50 postgraduate students who receive diplomas in data science and business innovation. It’s hoped that within a decade, the numbers will exceed 2000, including 100 PhD students.

Monash has always been a groundbreaker in the international space. Just as it was the first overseas university to establish a full campus in Indonesia last year, it was the first to set up shop in Malaysia 25 years ago and South Africa in 2001 (since sold).

It was also the first Australian university to establish a prestigious research partnership with an Indian Institute of Technology and a graduate school in China. It’s centre in Prato in Tuscany is the cherry on the icing on the cake.

As such a big player in region, through research and education – 30,000 in Australia, another 10,500 at its offshore campuses – Gardner says her eyes have been opened to how other nations see higher education as a critical tool to advancing their societies.

“What you get is an unprecedented view and that makes a difference on the quality of education and research and how it’s spread and delivered across the region,” she says.

“And that particular perspective, and the ability to make decisions, will no longer be available to me.”

Incredibly intelligent

It is impossible to speak of Gardner without reference to her fierce intellect.

“She is incredibly intelligent and achieved at the highest levels yet remains self-effacing and empathetic,” says Vicki Thomson, chief executive of the Group of Eight, who has worked side-by-side with Gardner for two decades.

“Margaret’s intellect is inspiring – she’s open to new ideas, always prepared to challenge the status quo, with her eye firmly on the policy prize. When struggling with complex issues, as we do at times in the university sector, you could have absolute faith in her intellect – the destination was always worth the journey.”

“Great ally, formidable presence, assiduous, innately knows how to play the long game with skill and nuance,” says Peter Coaldrake, chief commissioner of the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency, who has known Gardner since they worked as junior lecturers at Griffith University in the 1980s.

“We conspired together, with a few others, to prevent the school’s takeover by the accountancy academics. We both wanted a strong focus on public policy. Glyn joined a little time later as one of the recruits in that field.”

Glyn, of course, is Glyn Davis, former vice-chancellor of Melbourne and Griffith universities and now Australia’s top bureaucrat. He is also Gardner’s husband.

For people who live such public-facing lives, they have remained exquisitely private.

A rare exception to the rule was in 2017 when they posed for a photographic portrait by Jacqueline Mitelman, commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery.

For a while they acquired the sobriquet as the Posh and Becks of Melbourne – which they both loathed – as they peddled extraordinary influence, culturally, politically and among the intelligentsia, as the heads of Melbourne’s three biggest universities: Melbourne, Monash and RMIT.

Gardner grew up in Sydney’s Western Suburbs, the child of parents who both left school at 15. Her original ambition was to be an economist with the Reserve Bank or Treasury, but those plans got derailed when she found herself deeply intellectually engaged in a topic she’d never even thought about: industrial relations.

That led to an honours degree at the University of Sydney, which in turn lead to a PhD examining trade union strategy relating to female professions of teaching and nursing. A Fulbright Scholarship followed with time spent at some of the US’s most stellar universities – University of California Berkeley, MIT and Cornell. Her return to Australia was marked by an ever-upward trajectory.

The signs of Gardner’s success as a vice-chancellor are everywhere. She arrived at RMIT in 2005 to an institution on its knees, broke and broken. When she left nine years later, it was again one of Australia’s most recognisable brands.

Monash was a different story. It had been well run over successive vice-chancellors – save for David Robinson who was sacked in 2002 over plagiarism charges.

However, during her nine years at the helm, the scale of Monash’s operations have dramatically increased. Total student numbers increased from 57,000 in 2014 to 72,100 on 2022. Revenues grew from $1.98 billion to $2.86 billion and international student revenues, including offshore campuses, increased from $460 million to $1.1 billion nine years later.

McKeon says the secret to Gardner’s success is to surround herself by truly outstanding people and to not be afraid of a “debate”.

“I use the word courage. She doesn’t mind being told there is another point of view. In the age of celebrity, we tend to focus on the individual, but her true strength has been a continuous focus on having a winning team at the top. She’s done that as well as any private sector CEO I’ve ever met.”

Jackson puts it this way: “You never die wondering with Margaret – but she will always entertain an intelligent counter-argument.”

Coaldrake agrees: “A person of deep convictions and firm views. In her leadership roles she also tolerated the lunatic fringe. Apart from her occasional giveaway eye-roll, [she] was tolerant of and could work with views across the plenary.”

Advocate for gender equality

When she speaks to The Australian Financial Review in her final media interview before embarking on her new life, Gardner is not her usual self.

She’s been bed-bound, struck down by an epic case of the flu that has left the woman with usually volcanic levels of energy listless and short of breath.

“I have always loved universities and Monash is very much a part of me. I’ve spent my entire adult life as an academic,” Gardner says.

“But there is a point at which you have to go. I doubt I’ll ever lose my identify as an academic because that is how I was trained. It’s going to be a big challenge not to continue what I’ve been doing for my entire life.”

Gardner was an early advocate for women in higher education, building networks that allowed women to crash through the glass ceiling and avoid, if possible, the glass cliff.

As a sector, universities have out-performed the Australian Securities Exchange for female representation in leadership roles, but it’s still a hard road.

Of the 39 universities that are UA members, only 11 are run by women (including Gardner). She is only one of two women to have been in charge of a university in Australia for more than 15 years (long-serving Macquarie University boss Di Yerbury is the other).

Jackson describes Gardner as “towering figure in universities and Australian public life who has risen through the ranks in a world that is still very male at the top”.

She has done it on her own terms.

“Monash has always been a good university. But the past nine years, has seen Margaret propel it forward,” says McKeon.

Her crowning glory, he says, may be that Monash is the only modern western, university established in the past 60 years to be firmly established in the world’s top 50 universities.

“Most universities that rank highly have been around for centuries. Monash is the only young university outside China and Asia to really establish itself in the top 50,” he says.

As she packs her bag to head to Indonesia for the final time as a vice-chancellor, Gardner, a self-proclaimed republican, will leave behind the life she has always known for the next chapter.

“What a lovely way to finish,” she says.