The ANU – What can we learn?

by KEITH HOUGHTON
11 January 2026

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.

What went wrong? More importantly, what can we learn?

The analysis was not made public earlier because it may have created controversy, which would only exacerbate an already difficult position. It uses the Higher Education and Research Group’s approach to measuring university performance.

In terms of size, when measured by student numbers, the ANU is small. In 2023, the latest full year of official government data, the university enrolled 17,411 equivalent full-time students (EFTSL). This is down from 20,015 EFTSL in 2018; about 27% of the size of Monash, 30% of Sydney, and 32% of Melbourne. The ANU is a little smaller than the University of Tasmania but larger than Princeton, Yale, MIT, and about the same size as Harvard and Cambridge. Australian universities’ average student population is large compared with first-world counterparts, likely a consequence of Australia’s idiosyncratic funding incentives. Also, both government and business research funding have failed to follow the huge rise in research being published with attribution to Australian public universities. Given the explosive growth of research in Australian universities (over a dozen years from 2011 to 2022, rising from around 81,000 publications attributed to researchers in Australian universities to 166,500) there is considerable strain, particularly on highly research-active universities.

The ANU is both small and highly research-intensive.

For decades, the ANU was Australia’s leading university. Its global presence was like no other Australian university. This was the situation well before the ranking of universities globally became a key metric for university management. This premier position was unquestioned until around 15 or 20 years ago. At that time, The University of Melbourne began to compete and ultimately overtake ANU in global ranking. Looking at the four major university ranking agencies (QS, THE, ARWU, and Leiden), the overall trajectory between 2004 (typically the first year of records) and 2025 saw The University of Melbourne move up, and the ANU move down in these rankings.

Despite its strengths, the ANU was facing challenges. The analysis that follows examines certain key factors. If you looked in the right places, the bottom line is simple: the recent events were predictable.

In October 2024, the then-new Vice-Chancellor revealed a pressing need to reduce the recurring budget by around $250M. Budget cuts are not unusual in Australian higher education. Still, a quarter of a billion dollars elicited considerable debate.

How did it come about? While the full story begins decades earlier, the last several years are pivotal.

In April 2022, the University announced the past few years had been “among the most challenging in our 75-year history.” ANU had reported a $232.4M surplus in 2021, aided by $136.5M in unrealised investment gains and insurance receipts, but since 2022, operating results have included substantial deficits.

These accounting numbers do not tell the full story. Historically, teaching and research are routinely managed independently despite that fact that they both draw on the same resources within a university. To comprehensively report on both activities, a methodology that provides an integrated measure of performance is essential to support evidence-based decision-making by management.

The following analysis uses the HERG approach to present the ANU’s education and research productivity performance from 2010 to the commencement of 2024, when the then Vice Chancellor was early in her tenure.

This analysis shows that performance improved in several years after 2011, peaking between 2017 and 2019 inclusive. Then there was a period of net decline. Relative to many other universities, including those in the Group of Eight (Go8), using the HERG performance measure, the ANU’s performance was clearly in decline.

In the two charts below, performance is shown across two dimensions: research productivity, measured by the number of publications per million dollars spent in academic activities, and education productivity, measured by the number of full-time equivalent students enrolled weighted by enrolment type. Gains in education productivity are shown as movement to the right on the chart; research productivity gains are reflected in an upward movement.

In Chart 1, the blue dotted line shows ANU’s productivity pathway from 2010 to 2015, which was a net positive trajectory (movement up and to the right). The year 2016 (black line) saw a decline, then an improvement in 2017. The peak performance (marked in purple) was between 2017 and 2019 inclusive. In 2020, the ANU had its largest-ever single-year productivity decline. This was more than any other Australian university. The ANU was not alone, but it was an extreme case.

Productivity in teaching and research showed signs of recovery in 2021, but it was short-lived and declined again in 2022 and again in 2023. The net performance movement from 2020 to 2023 is shown in red. The 2023 performance level was lower than in the mid-2010s.

Between 2020 and 2023, The University of Melbourne extended its lead over ANU in research productivity, and, importantly, the quality of the research published was comparable to that of ANU.

Put simply, this level of ANU’s performance, over several years, was problematic. This level of performance has consequences. As of late 2025, these consequences have been highlighted by the media. 

Using the 2023 data, the HERG analysis pointed to the need for a budget reduction of between $220M and $260M per annum (or an equivalent increase in net income) to restore performance to earlier peak levels.

It is possible that the then Vice Chancellor was unaware of the true performance level of the University. Others, including the University Council, may not have been privy to the relevant metrics either.

Management may have been using costing data that was far from optimal. The valid partitioning between teaching and research costs is challenging for universities, but important in order to optimise university performance. The application of accounting techniques such as Activity Based Costing, designed for ‘for-profit’ entities, can drive misestimates resulting in erroneous data.

Chart 2 compares ANU’s performance position with other Australian public universities at the point when Professor Bell was early in her tenure. The colour-coded ‘dots’ represent Australia’s 37 major public universities, with orange representing Go8 members.

The ANU and The University of Melbourne are both identified in Chart 2. The latter is considerably further up the chart and to the right. That is to say, the cost efficiency with which The University of Melbourne completes the tasks of teaching and research is significantly different from that of the ANU. Arguably, the two universities are directly comparable to each other in terms of quality, especially in respect of research.

In earlier times, these relative positions were reversed. Indeed, in years past, the ANU was the strongest performer amongst the research-intensive universities.

There is an expectation that ANU’s recent past performance must not define its future. Recovery is seen as essential by many. The road map to get there cannot simply rely on expenditure cuts, nor can it just focus on revenue generation. The task is more nuanced, requiring valid data and necessitating both innovation and evidence in management and governance decision-making.