Winds of change buffeting ANU funding

OUR foremost research centre is being sidelined.

THE Australian National University was founded in 1946 to be different. It was designed to engage in research at the highest international levels.

It had special funding arrangements and recruited an impressive array of faculty. And ANU delivered, rapidly rising to become our leading research university, one that produced three of the six Nobel Prizes won by Australians, with its alumni forming the nucleus of many departments in Australia. ANU, however, was not the only place that undertook quality research.

And while its special funding arrangements engendered tall-poppy-syndrome grumbles in some quarters, the university arguably did a very poor job at engaging and working with the rest of the research community in Australia.

ANU still continues to enjoy the highest overall level of research excellence (89 per cent of our disciplines were rated "above world standard" or "well above world standard" in the Excellence in Research for Australia ratings).

But as a much smaller institution than, say, the University of Melbourne, it can no longer claim to be the university that has the most research excellence overall.

The winds are blowing the wrong way for ANU.

Government funding does not cover the full cost of research, so universities need to cross-subsidise research through large student enrolments. ANU, which has a very small student base, is forced to subsidise research activities via our "national institutes" block grant.

There is no direct mechanism that financially rewards universities for excellence in teaching or research. One could argue that excellence can be measured by grant success, but since grants fall short of covering the cost of research every successful grant has to be subsidised from elsewhere.

Grants do not encourage a strategic or long-term approach to research. Instead, someone else decides what you get to do. These winds affect not just ANU, but are driving the entire Australian sector towards being big, and mediocre.

For the past 15 years, there has been a major shift by government towards National Health and Medical Research Council funding over the Australian Research Council.

ANU has concentrated strongly on fundamental research and social science, so that even its work in medical areas is not well aligned to the new funding from the NHMRC. So while universities such as Melbourne, Queensland and Monash have been able to soak up this rapidly increasing part of the research spend, ANU has been left behind.

ANU faces the real threat of losing its status as Australia's premier research university. And, if that happens, the argument for the very existence of a national university is undermined. And that would be a great tragedy for this nation.

The great universities of the world share three traits: the quality of education and, consequently, their alumni, their research capacity and their interaction with industry.

ANU should not follow other universities by growing student numbers. We should decrease our student numbers and select a diverse and excellent student population based on a combination of interviews and ATAR entry scores.

ANU remains excellent by Australian standards at research, but we need to strive to be absolutely excellent by international standards. We need to continue to review what we are doing at each department, and ask ourselves, "Is this a top-20 department in the world?"

Industry engagement is a long-held conundrum for ANU. The CSIRO Black Mountain facility is on our back doorstep. Combining our campuses, making joint appointments and having joint scientific projects would make both groups stronger, and would instantly help bring a culture of innovation to ANU, as well as bring our vast expertise to CSIRO.

If we are going to focus on excellence and differentiation, then we are going to need support from the federal government. This means policies that encourage excellence in teaching and excellence in research, and encourage industry engagement. These changes will benefit the entire sector.

Nobel laureate and professor of astrophysics Brian Schmidt will speak tomorrow night in Canberra at University House on the future of the ANU.