From the Vice-Chancellor's desk

Lecture hall by al-Taqi, Flickr.

There are a number of infrastructure challenges for the education sector in the future. Some of these are short term; others will play out over a much longer time horizon. In the short term, a major challenge is the funding of research infrastructure. Over the last five years,Australiahas invested more than $1 billion in major research facilities through the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS). NCRIS has funded major national facilities acrossAustralia. NCRIS funding formally ends in mid 2012, although many facilities will have funding available until the end of 2012. At present, it is not clear that ongoing funding will be available for NCRIS, particularly in the very tight budget situation over coming years. If ongoing NCRIS funding doesn’t eventuate it means that many of these facilities will close. This would be both a major blow for Australian research and a waste of the already significant investment.

The longer term issues concern the expansion of the higher education system as a result of the Bradley reforms. The Government aim is to expand the number of 25-34 year olds with a Bachelor qualification from 29 per cent of the population to 40 per cent by 2025.

This expansion represents an additional 250,000 students in our university system. Consider that for a moment. This is the equivalent of adding 10 new medium-sized universities or significantly expanding the size of our existing institutions. Estimates of the additional infrastructure (buildings, lecture halls etc) required for such an expansion are between $0.7 billion and $1 billion every year between now and 2025. To achieve this would require a major expansion of the Education Investment Fund (EIF). This figure does not include re-investment required simply to maintain our existing facilities.

I suspect that such an investment will not eventuate and this will mean that institutions will need to look to a number of alternatives. We should always strive to use our existing facilities more efficiently. All universities can do a better job of utilising space efficiently (ie. the percentage of time existing facilities are actually used). Similarly, alternative delivery modes, such as greater use of online education, will undoubtedly expand.

Both of these issues clearly indicate the large amounts of money tied up in infrastructure across our universities. ANU is no exception. The maintenance and replacement of our infrastructure is a major element of our budget and one we need to consider very carefully.

Comment by Katherine Hamilton
February 22, 2012 @ 11:48 am

A proposal to resource ongoing maintenance at ANU. The ACT Government has a redevelopment plan for Northbourne Avenue. My suggestion is to sell Fenner House to either ACT Govt or developer (possibly $20-25m). Broker an agreement with ACT Govt to zone Sculpture Park for student accomodation. Broker a contract with 3rd party provider to build residential complex with more beds than Fenner House. Put profit from sale into Future Fund for ANU and use the interest for ongoing maintenance costs across the campus.