Without the unique $247m National Institutes Grant (NIG) from the Commonwealth, ANU would be even more broke than management warns.
It’s another problem for the university’s executive, as its controversial savings plan mutates into multifaceted disputes. What started as an ANU executive-union dispute over the need for savings and where they should come from is now expanding into arguments over whether ANU with fewer staff will serve Canberra and the country. And it risks catalysing a comprehensive conflict over how universities in general should be run.
The NIG dates from the ANU’s foundation after World War Two as a research resource for the nation, when other universities were all about teaching. It funds ANU to research whatever management wants – after all, what isn’t covered by “enhancing Australia’s prosperity through supporting sustainable economic development, innovation and creativity, and research and education (particularly research and education in areas of national importance to Australia)”?
When ANU management was planning savings, it may not have occurred to them the NIG would come up. But it has. Calls for it to be shared with other universities began at the beginning of the year.
Critics of the various ANU savings plans argue they breach NIG requirements, which are part of ANU’s Act of Parliament. Like ACT senator David Pocock, who hopes to move when the Senate next sits, that it note job losses, “imperil the Australian National University’s capacity to fulfill its functions under the Act.”
Which creates an opportunity for critics to suggest sharing the NIG wealth with other universities.
“Maybe it is time for all options to be laid out on the table, including the possibility that the future of Australian arts and humanities should not lie in the capital, but beyond — through a networked approach to supporting the regions and communities that are already doing this work, often with minimal support, against the odds. Maybe that’s where we should be investing,” Kylie Messenger (ANU) and Victoria Kuttainen (James Cook U) propose.
It is not going to happen, at least while ANU management can credibly maintain the case it is short of cash. But that may not be helped by another idea from Senator Pocock. He also wants the Senate to resolve, “that the ANU shall be instructed to pause any further forced redundancies or other terminations of ongoing staff until the Education and Employment Legislation Committee concludes its inquiry into the quality of governance at Australian higher education providers and presents its report.”
That isn’t going to happen either, unless Education Minister Jason Clare wants to provide paroxysm to every university Chancellor in the country. But the committee could consider a great many questions that apply to ANU – a hearing is scheduled for Canberra on Tuesday. It is picking up where its predecessor in the last Parliament stopped when the election was called. It was hugely popular with the National Tertiary Education Union, which argues university councils are stacked with outsiders who want universities to be run like businesses. A committee report along those lines would be not great for the governance model and memberships of universities in general and probably plain bad for ANU.
There is way more in play than the NIG.