University of Otago founded
- When
- 3 June 1869
- Where
- Dunedin · Ōtepoti
- Reach
- Local
Gold money funded New Zealand’s first university, which opened to students in 1871 and admitted women from the start.
Otago was established by provincial ordinance while Dunedin was still the richest city in the colony. Kate Edger graduated BA from Auckland in 1877 as the first woman in New Zealand to take a degree, and Otago produced the country’s first woman medical graduate, Emily Siedeberg, in 1896. The university’s early openness to women was unusual by the standards of the time.
Regions affected
Sources
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