From the Vice-Chancellor's desk

The Federal Budget contained some positives and, unfortunately, some serious negatives for the University.

The Budget included the announcement of a $3 million endowment to establish a Tax Studies Institute in the Crawford School of Public Policy and contained a one-year extension of the Future Fellows program, a two-year extension of funding for the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Scheme (NCRIS) and additional Commonwealth Supported Places for Diploma students, particularly in Asian languages.

However, it also confirmed the efficiency dividend cuts announced by the Minister last month. Combined with the cuts announced in October last year, this means ANU faces a reduction in income of $23 million in 2014 and $28 million in 2015.

The cuts will have a significant impact on the whole sector, but they will hit ANU particularly hard because, as the most research-intensive university in the nation, we cannot simply enrol more undergraduate students – as many larger universities will do – to cover shortfalls.

We must now begin estimating in detail the impact of these and other changes on our overall budget.

A series of discussion forums will be held between 3 and 14 June seeking staff and student input for solving the serious budget challenges we confront as a result of these cuts.

The discussion forums will be led by our new Executive Director, Administration and Planning, Chris Grange.

There will be no powerpoint presentations. The forums are to discuss the challenges we confront and to seek your ideas to help solve the issues. 

The timetable for the forums is listed on Solving our Budget Challenges website. If you can’t attend your area forum, you can register for one of three general forums.                 

In addition to the forums, you can also contribute ideas to suggestions@anu.edu.au. Suggestions will be carefully considered and will be shared on the website.

As I said in my earlier post, our priorities are to our research and education, to our staff and students and to the academic quality of our institution.

As an interim and prudent measure while we work through with staff and students opportunities for savings, we have instituted a temporary recruitment hold for professional staff positions, with a process to ensure that recruitment continues for essential positions.

However, decisions about how we solve these budget challenges will only be made after the ANU community has had an opportunity to contribute to the development of a detailed plan.

I urge you to attend and participate in a discussion forum.