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.
UNIVERSITY COST MEASUREMENT and PRODUCTIVITY ASSESSMENT
EXPLAINER SERIES
Introducing the Research and Education Efficiency Frontier (REEF) Methodology
Explainer 1
by HERG
05 January 2024
The need to measure costs and productivity in higher education is crucial for the effective and efficient use of resources. University management needs to understand its costs to employ scarce resources productively. Those who administer government policy need to understand the costs to direct funding in a valid and efficient manner.
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.