As its 150th celebrations peak this weekend, the university can look back on 150 years of success and 150 years of change.
Without regular adaptation, it would not have thrived. It opened with three professors and 81 male students and today has about 20,000 students and about 4000 staff.
It has had to live by its motto, sapere aude - dare to be wise.
That attitude goes back to its founders. A mere 21 years after Otago Settlement ships the John Wickliffe and the Philip Laing landed at Port Chalmers, the Otago Provincial Council "dared to be wise". On the prompting of Thomas Burns and James Macandrew, and championed by the church authorities, the council's 1869 ordinance established a university. It was endowed with land.
Those first Scottish settlers were deeply committed to education. When Parliament decided against setting up a colonial university for the present - men were expected to trek to Britain for further study - Dunedin interests decided to go it alone. They were bolstered by support from land the settlement had set aside for "religious and educational purposes" and by gold-rush prosperity.
Those first professors taught classics and English language and literature, mathematics and natural philosophy, and mental and moral philosophy and political economy. The next year, a professor of natural science was appointed. Law and medicine soon followed and a School of Mines was established.
Success has never been guaranteed, and there have been times when growth has slowed and even reversed. Dunedin suffers both the tyranny and freedom of distance, tucked away in the south of the South Island, far away from just about everywhere.
Schools, faculties and departments have come, changed and sometimes disappeared. The School of Mines, for example, morphed into Mineral Technology before being shifted to the University of Auckland in the 1980s. Information science emerged with the computer age and Russian taught as a language emerged and then faded.
When Otago first opened - in 1871 in Princes St - shops and offices shut so people could watch. Now, there are more than 150,000 former students and campuses in Christchurch, Wellington, Auckland and Invercargill.
The university is in the top few percent in leading world rankings and it continues to attract among the best students and academics.
Such is its billion-dollar-plus impact and its cultural, sporting and social influence that it has become the crux of Dunedin. The city's prosperity has and will, fundamentally, rise and fall with the university's fortunes.
Two decades ago, as online courses began to flourish overseas, some forward-looking pundits thought Otago's days as a flourishing residential university were numbered. How wrong they were. The demands for brick and mortar continue apace, and the campus living and learning experience remains a primary and precious Otago asset.
The challenges will not diminish, and, at present, staff morale across many departments has been bludge- oned by the general staff restructuring. Nonetheless, this weekend provides the chance for staff, students and the wider community to celebrate the massive success of the University of Otago since those small beginnings.
Otago has survived and thrived as its leaders adapted to changing circumstances - and as they dared to be wise.
