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With scholarships and a doctorate from Oxford, UWA's Vice-Chancellor had a brilliant start to his career. Now he farewells UWA's Rhodes Scholars to Oxford and our John Monash Scholar to Harvard.

Paul Johnson grew up in the United Kingdom, in the city of Bath, a spa centre characterised by its crescents of pale gold Georgian terraces set in the folds of Somerset's green hills.

In 1966, this heritage city acquired its first university, an event that initially furrowed the brows of his parents, for it brought an avalanche of "hippies and arty types" to town.

"It was the era of flower power and Vietnam war demonstrations and when long-haired students arrived in our beautiful city, my parents thought it a dubious move," he recalls.

Paul Johnson was a teenager at the time, attending the local selective King Edward School. While his parents might have looked askance at the arty types, they did believe in the value of education. When they had noticed their son's boredom at primary school, they arranged for him to be tested at the local selective school.

Not only did the school, King Edward, offer him a place, it suggested he skip a year - "so not only was I no longer bored, I was quite challenged," he recalls.

The enthusiastic young scholar was now at a school where the head and deputy had degrees from Oxford and Cambridge, "So, whereas my parents had an intuitive faith in the value of education, it was my teachers at King Edward who had the knowledge to direct my capabilities."

The result was that he graduated from King Edward School exceptionally well, was offered an exhibition and soon found himself ensconced in the wood-panelled comfort of St John's College, Oxford - feeling just a tad alien among the old Etonians and the graduates of Winchester and Harrow.

"I'd come from a lower middle-class family," he recalls. "My father worked in an egg-packing factory and we'd had a hard time when he lost his job. He left school at 16, my mother at 15. There weren't many books in our house.

"To be suddenly transported to a 16th century dining hall, to be studying in a library with beautifully carved book shelves and desks - it was a bit surreal. Of course I was not alone, and I found friends initially from those with similar backgrounds.

"I do remember assuming, when I arrived, that students from the elite schools would be very, very smart (and they certainly gave that impression) but I soon discovered that academically I was in no way less able.

"So I relaxed and began to enjoy the intellectual challenge of Oxford, which I found exciting. And like any undergraduate, I learned a lot about myself and about people and how to work with them and co-operate.

"For me, higher education opened up worlds of possibilities I didn't know existed. It has given me the opportunity to do a whole range of things which, in a sense, were beyond the comprehension of my parents. My education also gave me access to occupational and social mobility. I was very lucky."

At the end of his undergraduate studies, he found himself juggling an offer from a firm of international management consultants while also being encouraged to take up a DPhil scholarship at Oxford.

On completing his postdoctoral research, Paul Johnson launched himself into his professional field during the depths of the 1984 recession that radically reduced academic posts in Margaret Thatcher's Britain.

He was offered a post as a lecturer at the London School of Economics, one of the world's leading social science institutions. "I knew the five other candidates and all were perfectly credentialled, so I felt fortunate," he recalls.

At the LSE he rose rapidly through the ranks - from Lecturer to Professor, then Head of Department and, for his last three years, Deputy Director.

Like others in the upper echelons of the LSE, his expertise in pension reform and the economics of demographic change was sought by the World Bank, the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, the British Government and the House of Lords.

Increasingly, he also found himself in demand in academic management.

"It was a kind of drift," he remembers. "I am characterised by a degree of impatience. If I see things happening that seem dumb, unimaginative or inappropriate, I think to myself: ‘We can do better'. And I try to change them.

"In working with colleagues to make things better, I found myself taking on roles that had institution-wide impacts at the LSE and while that took me away from my specialisation, I enjoyed this new role."

During this time both he and his wife Susannah, a fellow academic with an Oxford PhD and a lectureship at LSE, had Visiting Fellowships at Australian Universities (ANU and the University of Melbourne) that led to their decision, following the birth of their children, Oriana and Orlando, to move to Australia.

Professor Johnson became Vice-Chancellor of La Trobe in Melbourne, and when the post as UWA Vice-Chancellor was offered, the couple welcomed the chance to live in Perth, where, as a child, Susannah had spent summer holidays visiting an aunt in Nedlands.

Has the new Vice-Chancellor's approach to university access been shaped by his academic journey - a primary student saved from boredom by a selective school that paved the way for Oxford studies?

"Yes, my own experience has coloured my views about access but also my views about excellence," says Professor Johnson.

"Here at UWA we want the very best students so that we can give them the very best education. But we have to accept the fact that not all students are equally able or prepared or motivated to study, and we have a one-dimensional representation of ability in the school-leaving ATAR score.

"I will always be looking for the student who is very capable and very committed. We need to capture those skills, because every time a talented student is excluded, it's a cost to society as well as to that student."

Published in Uniview Vol. 31 No. 2 Winter 2012