By Madeleine Crabtree
On Friday, 20 March, a Student Community Meeting was held at Kambri’s Outdoor Amphitheatre to discuss the upcoming University Strategy, and to give students the opportunity to ask questions to the ANU leading staff.
Staff in attendance included Interim Vice-Chancellor Rebekah Brown and Joan Leach, the Deputy Vice-Chancellor. They were also joined by Charley Ellwood, President of ANUSA and undergraduate student member of the ANU Council.
Ellwood started the meeting by acknowledging that the ANU is currently without a strategy. A new strategy would act as the blueprint for the next five to ten years, and he stated it would need to be reflective of the whole community at the ANU, not just staff.
Brown agreed with this sentiment, saying that the student voice needs to be involved in crafting the next strategy, as the university is “shaped by the student body”. She noted last year’s “period of uncertainty”, originating from the launch of the Renew ANU program in October 2024, and said the university has no plans to pursue it again under her leadership.
Her aims are a balanced budget for 2026 and no involuntary staff redundancies. She further stated the role of stability in rebuilding confidence at the ANU, hoping this can be achieved with the new design for the university, which the Council aims to have developed by April 2026. In the question time, she discussed the importance of having a strategy to outline institutional priorities, noting its use as a tool to say ‘no’ to things and to hold the university accountable to its actions.
Leach further discussed the new strategy, stressing that it is not just about “which subjects we teach,” but also “what kind of place we want ANU to be”. She focused on learning about the students’ day-to-day experience, as well as preserving what is “unique” about the university.
Students were then able to ask questions through a website accessed via a QR code, read out by Ellwood to the staff.
These questions included a discussion on how the university will respond to the ever-increasing price of degrees and the cost-of-living crisis. Brown responded by stating there has been less investment in research and development, and pressure on universities to be as financially sustainable as possible. She claimed the ANU would never do this at the expense of the quality of education, research, and the student experience, and emphasised the importance of other lines of revenue. For example, the university sector has started to focus on enterprise and commercial relationships. She finished her answer by calling the issue a conversation to be had with the government, with them needing to ask how much they value Australia’s knowledge economy.
The ANU is currently searching for a permanent Vice-Chancellor to fill the role, left vacant by the resignation of former Vice-Chancellor Genevieve Bell, with Professor Brown acting only as Interim Vice-Chancellor. Students questioned what would prevent the new Vice-Chancellor, once found, from pursuing similar objectives to the Renew ANU program. Brown stated that Renew ANU had been presented as the solution to a “crisis”, with two objectives. These included strengthening financial sustainability and having operational excellence, which ultimately proved unachievable over 15 months. The program came at the expense of well-being, and Brown enforced that governing bodies could not allow this to happen again. She noted it was generated in the “absence of a strategy”, which is why they are determined to develop one currently.
The conversation on the impact of Renew ANU continued, with Ellwood asking what the biggest lesson the university needed to learn from last year was. Brown responded that it was the need for leading staff to “ask for cases where they’re modelling the risks and potential impacts to students and staff before decisions are made”. Leach added to this, saying that while Renew ANU never posed a direct threat to courses, if professional staff were placed under threat, then students would, of course, be impacted.
In response to reports such as ‘Cooking the books at the Australian National University’ suggesting there was a lack of financial justification for Renew ANU, Brown stated that although she “trusts whatever they find”, when looking at operating income, the report did not distinguish between restricted and unrestricted income. While restricted income is registered as operating income, it is money the university cannot spend. Brown noted the importance of this and emphasised that the report “was not clear” about the portion of income that was restricted.
Brown declared that this meeting was a “start and a demonstration”, ensuring students’ voices are properly enshrined at the university, showing the leading staff’s commitment to working with ANUSA. She also stated that when the first version of the new strategy is ready by mid- to late-April, it will be sent to students for feedback, with the aim of launching the strategy by August.
The discussion included student residences, with students asking how the ANU plans to grow and improve the practice. Leach revealed that the Residential Experience Division (RED) have “all sorts of plans”, including making the residences more “financially helpful” to students to accommodate shifts in the economy. For example, residential student parking fees have already been dropped from $7.19 per day in 2025 to $4.90 from January 2026.
There was also focus on the ranking of the university. Relative ranking has been declining, however, Brown stated that due to the ANU’s particular spending model, they have not “had an office dedicated and focusing on relative ranking performance”. This spending model has been in use for six years, though other universities have been in and out of it within three years.
The meeting was concluded with promises for another later in the semester. Though not all questions were answered, there was an invitation to contact the Interim Vice-Chancellor or Deputy Vice-Chancellor for any remaining queries.
More to come.
Graphics by Harry Dennis
ANU Observer 