In December 1987 John Dawkins, the Australian Government Minister for Employment, Education and Training released a Green Paper that foreshadowed major changes in the tertiary education sector through the formation of a Unified National System. This was 16 years after the establishment of Griffith University and only 12 years since the admission of Griffith’s first undergraduate students.

Dawkins’ ideas presented Griffith University with a dilemma: whether to continue being different from other Australian universities—a boutique institution committed to ‘the Griffith way’ in pedagogy with a relatively small student enrolment and academic profile—or to become more like its academic peers and embrace growth and diversity. In only three years Griffith amalgamated with other academic institutions to become a multi-campus university, while still retaining some of its founding characteristics. Griffith emerged from the changes as a large and complex institution, different in ways that its founders could not have imagined.

Coming of Age traces the impact on Griffith University of the creation of the Unified National system.