Peter Hall^* Reports on the Release of the Report of the Quality Review of the Australian National University. (September 24, 2004)

    Today the ANU formally released the results, and its interpretation, of its review.  Although by name the review was of quality, its focus was substantially broader than might have been anticipated.  For example, the review considered the university's relationship with government and with Australia's Asian neighbours, and the quantity of the university's research and undergraduate training, as well as traditional issues of quality.

The review committee, chaired by Professor Deryck Schreuder (former VC of the University of Western Australia), comprised Tom Everhart (former President, Caltech), Deborah Freund (VC and Provost, Syracuse University), Franz Kuna (former PVC, Klagenfurt University, Austria), Colin Lucas (VC, Oxford University), Heather Ridout (Chief Executive, Australian Industry Group), Frank Shu (President, National Tsing Hua Univeristy, Taiwan), Wim Stokhof (Director, International Institute of Asian Studies, Leiden, The Netherlands), Jan Veldhuis (former President, Utrecht University, The Netherlands) and David Williams (former VC, Cambridge University).

Additionally, the review obtained the opinions of "some 285 external peers of the quality of ANU research outputs by discipline and by academic unit."  By this means the review sought to compare the ANU's research performance with that of international academia as a whole.  Additionally, performance data against other Australian universities were analysed, as too were bibliometric data, the results of undergraduate course surveys, etc.

Among recommendations that are likely to lead to change, it is suggested that the university:

• give "attention to strengthening its ties nationally and internationally," and in particular develop an "active agenda of engagement with the Asia-Pacific region,"

• aspire "to be an academically elite university of up to 6000 undergraduate students" and

• increase its national engagement and public policy role, and "expand its revenues" through work in this area.

The review also recommends that the government:

• remove "its restrictions on the number of domestic students who can undertake higher degree research studies at the ANU," and

• "sustain and progressively increase the block grant for the Institute of Advanced Studies over 2005-2010."

The issue of funding, for the University as a whole but with special emphasis on the IAS, received particular attention at the press conference at which the review was released today.  Commenting on the review's concern that the IAS block grant "has not been increased since the 1995 Review" of the Institute, the Vice-Chancellor observed that this issue posed a "big threat" to the continuing performance of the university.  He expressed his determination to campaign vigorously, armed with the results of the review, to improve the ANU's lot.

The results of the review shed a particularly favourable light on the university.  According to the report, the review was able to "confirm the standing of ANU within the elite `Top 100' research-intensive universities of the world, and even among the top 50 or so."  Detailed reports, and supplementary data, were placed on the web at 3.00 pm today.  See:

http://info.anu.edu.au/Discover_ANU/Review/index.asp

http://info.anu.edu.au/Discover_ANU/University-wide_Publications/Quality_Review.asp

Wisely, the ANU has been wary about drawing comparisons with the results of related, but different, reviews abroad, such as the Research Assessment Exercise in the United Kingdom.  However, the ANU review will inevitably be a catalyst for discussion, within Australia, of both national and international rankings and relationships.  Beyond the confines of the ANU, the main impact of the review may be its role as a portent for the future.  Many in the university sector believe that a national research review of Australian universities, not especially different from the RAE in terms of the way it addresses research and scholarship, will be an eventual outcome of the government's deliberations (for example, its enquiry last year into Australia's Block Research Funding Schemes).  The very fact that the ANU has conducted a closely related review, and will use the results vigorously to strengthen its own case for increased funding, will galvanise opinion and promote debate.

However, it must be stressed that the ANU's review was of very much more than research.  The review's five terms of reference ranged from the impact of the university's scholarship, through the quality of its undergraduate courses, to the strength and calibre of its national and international linkages.  The review was an especially bold, far-sighted idea, conceived and conducted in an environment of unprecedented challenge to Australia's universities, and completed in an extraordinarily short space of time.  (The possibility of a review was first mooted only late last year, in the context of a study of the IAS rather than of the university as a whole.)  There will be many who see the ANU review as a pointer to the future.  Certainly, the future of reviews of individual Australian universities will look quite different from this point.

*Peter Hall is professor at the Mathematical Sciences Institute, The Australian National University, Canberra