Sir Robert Bowden Madgwick (10 May 1905 – 25 March 1979) was an Australian educationist. He was the first Vice-Chancellor of the University of New England and served two terms as Chairman of the Australian Broadcasting Commission. Madgwick was an influential proponent of adult learning and extension studies in tertiary education. At the University of New England, he directed the development of several degree programs, including rural science, agricultural economics, and educational administration which were the first of their kind in Australia. In recognition of his contributions to education, Madgwick was appointed to the Order of British Empire in 1962 and knighted in 1966.
Born in North Sydney, New South Wales, Madgwick trained as a schoolteacher before attaining degrees in economics and economic history from the University of Sydney and University of Oxford. Appointed as a lecturer at the University of Sydney, Madgwick worked in the school's extension program which gave him experience and interest in adult education. With the onset of World War II, Madgwick and his colleagues proposed an adult education plan for the Australian Army. The government accepted the plan and, from 1941 to 1946, Madgwick served on active duty as Director of the Australian Army Education Service, which provided adult education services to the Army's 250,000 members during the conflict.
After his release from active duty in 1946, Madgwick was selected as Warden of the New England University College in Armidale, New South Wales. Assuming the position in 1947, Madgwick guided the school, then a college of the University of Sydney, to independence as the University of New England in 1954. Until his retirement in 1966, Madgwick presided over the school's expansion of its curriculum and facilities while promoting closer ties with the local community. Under Madgwick's leadership, the university took an early and leading role in adult education, extension degree programs, and agricultural research. After his retirement, Madgwick served from 1967 to 1973 as Chairman of the Australian Broadcasting Commission.
Madgwick was born on 10 May 1905 in North Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. He was the second of three sons of Australian-born parents Richard Charlton Madgwick and Annie Jane Elston. Madgwick's father was a tram-driver in Sydney and his mother a dressmaker. Both were active members of an Anglican church. Madgwick stated later that his parents taught him that, "all men and women were sacred, and poverty and injustice were in some way contrary to God's teaching." Madgwick described the most important things in his young life as family, church, and school.
Madgwick attended public school in Naremburn and North Sydney Boys High School. After graduating, he entered the University of Sydney in 1923 on a Sydney Teachers College scholarship. Madgwick graduated with a bachelor's degree in economics with first class honours in 1927 and shared the award of the first Sydney University Medal in Economics with (Sir) Hermann Black.
After receiving his degree, Madgwick obtained employment as a schoolteacher, first at Nowra High School in 1927, then at Parkes High School from 1927 to 1928. He later stated that his short stint as a secondary schoolteacher provided him invaluable experience because it taught, "that all young people are not equal either in ability or motivation, but that each one was a worthy object of my endeavours because each one was interesting in himself and because he had a right to be helped to achieve his potential."
In February 1929, he was appointed to a temporary position as a lecturer in economics at the University of Sydney. In this position, Madgwick participated in the university's adult education (called "tutorial") program, teaching several evening tutorial classes at the main Sydney campus as well as in Bondi and Manly. Madgwick said that this experience in adult education, "was to have a profound influence on my later career and on my attitude to education." In 1931, Madgwick and former classmate (Sir) Ronald Walker published a textbook titled An Outline of Australian Economics. The following year, Madgwick received a master's degree in economics from the University of Sydney. Madgwick's colleagues during this time included H. C. Coombs, who joined the faculty in 1932, Stephen Henry Roberts, and Ian Clunies Ross.
With assistance from economist R.C. Mills, in 1933 Madgwick was awarded a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship. Beginning that year, he attended Balliol College, Oxford, returning to Australia in 1935. In 1936 Oxford accorded Madgwick a doctor of philosophy. His thesis, published in London in 1937, was titled Immigration into Eastern Australia 1788–1851 and was one of the few scholarly works on Australian history to appear in print before World War II.
In 1936 Madgwick was a visiting Harbison-Higginbotham Scholar at the University of Melbourne. The same year, Madgwick took an appointment as a senior lecturer in economic history at the University of Sydney. In this capacity, Madgwick frequently worked with the university's department of tutorial classes and helped found the Sydney University Lecturers' Association. In 1937, he accepted appointment as Secretary of the Sydney University Extension Board (SUEB), which focused on adult education in surrounding communities, including lectures, tutorial classes, and study circles. Madgwick held the position until 1940, often travelling to rural communities in the Northern Rivers and New England areas of New South Wales to present lectures. Many of the lectures took place at the New England University College (later to become the University of New England) campus in Armidale.
Madgwick disapproved of the SUEB's approach to its education program, finding it too rigid and conservative to appeal to a community of people with many different backgrounds and goals. Madgwick felt it was better to provide adults the education that they wanted, not what the university thought "they needed or should have." He described his goal as "genuine liberal adult education." Based on his observations, Madgwick, as secretary of the program, helped implement a plan to redevelop the university's adult education program. The changes included following-up tutorial classes with extension lectures, widening the SUEB board membership, developing contacts to involve the local business community with the program, and more lectures on international affairs. Later, Madgwick explained more on his thoughts on adult education, saying,
If adult education were to succeed it must start by finding out what people were interested in, and then starting out to satisfy their interests. There is nothing at all wrong about this, providing adequate standards are maintained in both the lectures and the subject matter, for it can be established easily enough that the satisfaction of one interest or felt need will inevitably produce others, and the educational process continues.
In 1938, as a member of the Australian Institute of International Affairs Madgwick attended the British Commonwealth Relations Conference in Lapstone, New South Wales. From 1931 to 1940 he participated in the Round Table movement.
Madgwick married Ailsa Margaret Aspinall, daughter of H. J. Aspinall, at St Stephen's Presbyterian Church in Sydney on 19 May 1937. The marriage produced three daughters. Margaret Ann was born in March 1938, Ailsa Mary in June 1940, and Helen Millicent was born in June 1943.
From September 1939 to March 1940, Madgwick designed and managed an adult education scheme for the Sydney University Regiment, commanded by Victor Windeyer, based at Menangle. As Australia in 1940 became increasingly involved in World War II and expanded its military forces, Madgwick and colleagues David Drummond, C.E.W. Bean, (Sir) Robert W. Wallace (Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sydney), Richard Charles Mills, W. G. K. Duncan, Alf A.J. Conlon, and others began to publicly call for the Australian Army to install an adult education program to combat illiteracy among its members and educate them in the political history of Australia. Beginning in May 1940 and culminating in a special conference on 20 August 1940, Madgwick and the others cooperatively drafted an adult education scheme for the Army.