In late 2025, the Australian National University (ANU) found itself in the spotlight for reasons less flattering than its academic reputation. After only two years at the helm, Professor Genevieve Bell resigned as Vice Chancellor. There were months of speculation, debate, and even criticism.
Parliamentary Inquiry on University Funding
INSIGHTS & RESOURCES
Parliamentary Inquiry on University Funding
by HERG
29 June 2018
Key Takeaways:
- Efficiency in Research: Efficiency, in the context of research in Australian universities, refers to achieving the same level of output with fewer resources or obtaining a higher level of output with the same resources.
- Understanding Expenditure Context: To measure the efficiency of research funding, it is crucial to acknowledge that universities have two main outputs: research and education. Estimating the efficiency of both research and education is essential to evaluate overall research expenditure efficiency accurately.
- Measuring Efficiency and Productivity Growth: Graphical representations demonstrate an efficiency “frontier” that considers both education and research outcomes. The cost of research and research production is plotted to analyze efficiency across Australian public universities.
- Exchange Rate between Education and Research Costs: On average, the cost of educating 14 students equals the cost of funding one research publication in the Australian university system in 2016.
- Ongoing Research Topics: Various research topics are currently being investigated, including economies and dis-economies of scale in research and education establishments, the impact of multiple sourced research funding on efficiency, the relationship between university efficiency and executive remuneration, and more.
Australia has, on average, some of the largest universities in the English-speaking world. Some might speculate that this is an idiosyncratic outcome of the Australian education funding approach. While this is possible, even likely, the effect of global ranking algorithms may also factor into this. Those who have attempted to reverse engineer the three or four largest rankings appear to recognise that controlling for scale is a near-impossible task.
Earlier this year, the Higher Education and Research Group released its latest annual analysis of the productivity of the Australian university sector, including, for the first time, the three large private universities.