ANU plan to shut down Nobel-winning neuroscience research

Reeling from a $200m deficit, ANU plans to shut the flagship research area in which it won its first Nobel prize.

ANU vice-chancellor Brian Schmidt told staff “there is not a surprise surplus as seen at other universities

The Australian National University plans to shut its research in neuroscience, the field in which it won its first Nobel prize, as it reels from a 2020 deficit of $200m and heads towards its debt ceiling.

Vice-chancellor Brian Schmidt told staff in an update that “there is not a surprise surplus as seen at other universities — we will unfortunately see a deficit for 2020, as we expected”.

ANU last year flagged an estimated 2020 deficit of just over $200m, and expects to report deficits in 2021 and 2022, taking the university close to its debt limit.

Two other Group of Eight institutions — Monash University and the University of Melbourne — have in contrast announced healthy surpluses for 2020, despite pandemic travel restrictions barring the return of thousands of international students, who pay lucrative fees.

Monash reported a $259m surplus and Melbourne a $180m surplus for 2020, while the University of Sydney is also expected to report a surplus after saying that its financial outlook improved in the latter part of 2020.

Russell Gruen, the dean of ANU’s College of Health and Medicine, briefed staff on Wednesday on proposed spending cuts — a “least-worst option” — which will end the research program in neuroscience, which was once a flagship for the university. Professor Gruen acknowledged “the weight of history” in the field, because neurophysiologist Sir John Eccles won the 1963 Nobel prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work carried out at the ANU on synapses and the nervous system.

“It has been concluded that neuroscience research, while high quality, is not at a scale that enables it to be competitive with larger and more comprehensive centres of brain research elsewhere. Nor could it become so with the available resources,” Professor Gruen told staff.

He said the university would do all it could to ensure that current students in neuroscience, including those doing PhDs and masters, were able to complete their programs.

Professor Gruen said that narrowing the focus in biomedical research would allow the university’s prestigious John Curtin School of Medical Research to continue work in its other core fields of immunology, genome science and cancer, as well as pursuing opportunities to commercialise research.

He said the college’s 2021 budget was more than $11m less than the original budget for 2020, and the proposed spending cuts would lead to the loss of 22 jobs. The college will consult with staff over the changes for the next two weeks, before arriving at a final plan next month.

Professor Schmidt, in his message to staff sent last Friday, said that ANU’s loss of international students was, on a proportional basis, among the largest of all universities.

This is partly due to the fact that ANU had already decided, before the coronavirus pandemic, to limit its international student numbers to improve the student experience, he said.

“We remain confident that over the next several years we are amongst the best-placed universities to regain our revenue, but we need to be prudent with our expenses while we stay focused on rebuilding our income,” Professor Schmidt said.

The ANU had already announced it would cut more than 450 positions in an effort to deal with the loss of fees due to coronavirus travel bans. Last October, Professor Schmidt told the university that the ANU’s revised 2020 budget forecast a full-year deficit of $219m, excluding investment returns. The university’s recovery plan includes reducing annual spending by $103m in 2021, 2022 and 2023.

Professor Schmidt said the university still planned to pay the ACT government $17m for land occupied by a bus station adjacent to the campus.

“While we could have potentially reneged on our commitment, that piece of land — which will be irreplaceable to the future ANU — would be forever lost if we had not done so,’ he said.’