Universities in Canberra: ANU, UC & Guide

Canberra's higher education sector is defined by the Australian National University (ANU), which holds a unique position in Australian higher education: created by an Act of Parliament in 1946 as Australia's national research university (modelled on the great European national research universities), the ANU is the only Australian university explicitly established to serve the national interest in research and has consistently ranked as Australia's highest-ranked university in several major international systems (including the QS World University Rankings, where ANU has placed in the top 30). The ANU's extraordinary concentration of national and international research talent in a relatively small city creates a disproportionate intellectual environment that is one of Canberra's most significant and underappreciated assets.

Australian National University (ANU) — the ANU Acton campus (established 1946, adjacent to the Canberra CBD and the Lake Burley Griffin foreshore) covers 145 hectares in the inner-north Acton suburb and houses one of Australia's finest university research environments. The ANU colleges include the renowned Research School of Earth Sciences (with the world's finest mass spectrometry laboratory for geochronology), the ANU College of Law (consistently ranked among Australia's finest), the Crawford School of Public Policy (Australia's most influential public policy school, given its proximity to the federal Parliament), and the ANU School of Music. The ANU Chifley Library (named after Prime Minister Ben Chifley, who established the university) is one of Australia's finest research libraries. The ANU campus is walkable from the Canberra CBD and provides outstanding heritage modernist architecture from the 1950s-1970s.

University of Canberra (UC) — the University of Canberra (Bruce campus, adjacent to the AIS) provides professional and vocational-oriented higher education in health, law, education, and business. The UC Hospital (the public-private partnership teaching hospital on the UC campus) represents a significant development in the ACT's clinical education capacity. The UC provides important access-oriented higher education programming for Canberra residents for whom the ANU's research-intensive model is not the right pathway.

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