While studying for her undergraduate degree, Eardley was awarded the John Bagot Scholarship and Medal in 1928. She graduated from the University of Adelaide with a BSc in 1931 and received the Ernest Ayres Scholarship for her botanical work. Her honours thesis was titled "The Occurrence of Mycorrhiza [root fungus] in the Plants of South Australia" and was supervised by Joseph Garnett Wood. Her MSc, completed in the 1940s, was titled "Comparative studies of some Australian and extra-Australian floras from an ecological aspect".
