Great alumni return 50 years after graduation

Alumni

Bishop Dr Ian George AO, former Anglican Archbishop of Adelaide, has used his address at the University of Adelaide's recent Golden Jubilee Commemoration Ceremony to highlight the need for greater financial support for education.

Bishop George was one of 97 graduates from 1957 who attended the Golden Jubilee event in Bonython Hall last month. Others included Brisbane paediatrician and burns specialist Professor John F Leditschke, and retired manufacturing leader Robert Hill-Ling AO. Mr Hill-Ling, an engineering graduate of the University of Adelaide, spent 27 years at the helm of Hills Industries, the company that invented the Hills Rotary Hoist and went on to become a multi-national business, turning over more than $800 million per year.

Alumni from 1957 returned to their alma mater from as far afield as the US, Canada, Malaysia, the United Kingdom and New Zealand, as well as from across Australia, to attend the event.

Academic dress was worn for the ceremony to relive their graduation.

The Golden Jubilee Commemoration Ceremony is an annual event which enables University of Adelaide graduates from 50 years past to revisit old memories, renew friendships, take faculty tours and contribute to the University's tradition and culture.

In his address at the ceremony, Bishop George highlighted the lack of public funding for tertiary education and spoke of the difficulty many South Australians have to overcome to obtain a tertiary education. He called on those attending the event to help to do something about the problem.

"By and large, tertiary education offers the greatest hope and opportunity for social mobility in our society," he said.

"In a city like Adelaide, there is a genuine lack of opportunity in pockets where students are lucky to finish high school. Inevitably that is why there are generations of unemployed people in these areas, particularly in the northern suburbs, which leads to the wide range of social problems we are experiencing there. In these areas there are some of the lowest rates of tertiary education participation in Australia."