The future balance of graduate and undergraduate students at the ANU

Abstract

In July 1992 a specially convened joint meeting of Deans and Heads of Research Schools briefly considered the suggestion “that there is an increasingly pressing need for the formulation, at the highest level, of a clear policy on the balance of graduate and undergraduate students at the University”. The matter has since been discussed in various forums of the University, but no clearly defined goals have emerged. The present paper is written in an attempt to provide a definite focus for such discussions; it is not intended to be definite. Hitherto the University’s approach has apparently been simply to recruit as many graduate students as possible within the limitations of available supervisory capacity. In this spirit, one of the initial objectives of the Graduate School was enunciated as “to increase the number of graduate students at the University”.