Innovating Australian Higher Education

Professor Quigley at ANU.
Photo by Tom Worthington CCBY, 6 May 2026 

Greetings from the Australian National University where Professor Aaron Quigley as the new Dean of the ANU College of Systems and Society, welcomed entrepreneurs. ANU is hosting Canberra Innovation Network's First Wednesday pitch night. Before the one minute pitches, Professor Quigley invited everyone to comment on the university's draft strategy. 

Here are the comments I have submitted: 

Comments on ANU Draft Strategy

As requested, here are some comments on the "Draft Strategy v1.0, University Strategy", 21 April 2026:  

Answering the questions asked in the document:

* How can we best capture and articulate the distinctive, and complex, contribution that ANU makes to the nation?

I suggest starting from the functions of the ANU, as set by Parliament in legislation. In particular "... in relation to subjects of national importance to Australia ... its national and international roles and to the needs of the Australian Capital Territory and the surrounding region ...".

* How do we attract and support the talent that we need – in students and staff – to maximize the impact that we have through our research and education?

ANU can continue to use the marketing approach of promoting itself as a research intensive university with a national mandate. This sets ANU apart from other Australian universities and most around the world.

However, whatever the marketing says, being good at research doesn't make you good at education (the opposite in fact), so the university needs to ensure it has staff who are trained and formally qualified to teach. We could expand ANU's science communication area to provide training and qualifications in education, so staff and students don't have to obtain this elsewhere. To maximize impact we should expand collaboration with the Canberra Innovation Network, encouraging researchers to train in innovation and offering this as a formal part of degree programs.

* What do we need – in the ways we work, where we focus, or what we do – to be resilient to change from external forces like AI, demographic shifts and climate change?

The ANU should implement nested qualifications, work integrated learning and blended/online options. This will require staff to be trained in new ways of teaching and assessment.

AI is easily addressed, as has been discussed at numerous ANU symposiums. Staff need to be trained in how to use AI and how to teach this to students. Assessment needs to be changed from examination, to project based, with students presenting evidence of consistent long term work, then being questioned on what they have achieved.

Climate change can be addressed in part by ANU offering courses to combat it, such as ICT Sustainability, COMP7310 (Worthington, 2012). One of the techniques outlined in that course can be applied at ANU to reduce its carbon footprint: intensive use of facilities. ANU can increase the use of classrooms and other facilities, by doubling the number of students. This will reduce the carbon emissions, per student.

* What should we fix for our University to work better?

Opening University House should be a priority. The lack of opportunities for senior staff to mix informally at events may have hindered good governance over the last few years. One of the features of a great university, which I noticed when visiting Oxbridge, was the way wide consultation could be informally done. Senior university people need to hear unwelcome messages and it is best to do that is informally (Worthington, 1999).

ANU should call on its in house experts for advice on how to run the university. There should not be a need to call on external consultants, given that ANU staff, including myself, are called on for expert advice by industry and government.

* What’s missing?

The ANU should start from the functions set by the Parliament and devise strategies to achieve those. ANU should not try to find "new ideas" for the future of the university. As the experts at CBRIN point out, innovation is not about new ideas, it is about identifying who the client is, what they need, and providing that. There are many well tested approaches used by universities around the world, which ANU could adopt.

ANU can enhance its reputation by being seen to be addressing current national priorities. These include climate, economics, social and defence issues. ANU plays a significant role in these, but this rarely receives the attention it deserves.

As a postgraduate student of education, I looked at how to provide better learning at a research intensive university (ie: ANU). In studying the history of Australian universities, I found that, from the first, they had two main missions: firstly to provide trained professionals and secondly research for the benefit of society. An act of parliament directs ANU to those same two functions.

References

Worthington, T. (1999). "Cambridge live from a Double Decker Bus" in Net Traveler: Exploring the networked nation (2nd ed.). Australian Computer Society.

Worthington, T. (2012, July). A Green computing professional education course online: Designing and delivering a course in ICT sustainability using Internet and eBooks. In 2012 7th International Conference on Computer Science & Education (ICCSE) (pp. 263-266). IEEE. Presentation: https://www.tomw.net.au/technology/it/green_computing_professional/

ps: A previous version of this post was titled "Hacking Australian Higher Education". This was in the sense of hacking being about quick innovation. But then there was a hacking attack on Australian universites, so I changed the title to "innovating".