Australian National University cuts funding to postgraduate and research students association

The current PARSA executive were tasked with redrafting the association's constitution after infighting between the board and elected representatives interfered with its operations in 2021.

The university community was in late June informed the 62-year-old association would not be in line for any of the student services and amenities fee funding for 2023, which represents 98 per cent of PARSA's income.

Acting vice-president Tristan Yip said his team only found out one day before the announcement.

"It was really a shock. Our whole team sort of couldn't believe what we were seeing," Mr Yip said.

"It seemed like a really extreme response. There was no communication that the university was building up to that at all."

Deputy vice-chancellor academic Professor Grady Venville said in a statement the decision to remove funding was not a reflection of the work of the current PARSA executive.

"This decision was not made lightly. Over the course of the past 18 months, PARSA has been provided with repeated opportunities to remedy the issues," Prof Grady said.

"PARSA were aware, as part of the university's [student services and amenities fee] agreement with the association, that funding would be withdrawn if they were not able to meet the high level constitutional reforms to ensure a functioning association."

The university commissioned EY to review the issues in the association and present recommendations to prevent similar problems happening again.

Mr Yip said the new executive didn't see the full confidential report but believed the draft constitution did meet the report's recommendations.

"When we sent our constitution to the ANU to review, we also sent through a rationale which went through each recommendation and pointed to clauses in our constitution which address those recommendations," he said.

"The [corporate governance and risk office] said that we were heading in the right direction. They had a few amendments to make but they were happy for us to take it to our AGM for approval by students.

"The other stakeholder that we had to send it to was the deputy vice-chancellors, Grady Venville and Ian Anderson, and we never got a response from them apart from in at the end of June the letter which said they were defunding us. So I suppose no feedback at all."

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An ANU spokesman said PARSA had sent in multiple versions of its constitution but the drafts had not been finalised because they were not legally sound, not appropriately aligned to the applicable legislative instrument and had not fully addressed the university's concerns.

"The office provide multiple forms of feedback over the course of several months," the spokesman said.

"ANU has been concerned about PARSA's operations for some time now. The decision was not just based off the delays in constitutional reform, but rather widespread concern that PARSA has failed to meet its obligations as an association, including an additional extension on governance reform in early 2022."

In 2022, PARSA received $1.56 million in funding while the undergraduate student association, ANUSA, received $1.76 million.

Mr Yip said it was unclear what would happen to PARSA's 12 staff members and the services the association provided, including advisory services for migration, academic concerns and legal issues.

"It's difficult to see how postgraduate representation is going to be viable without a postgraduate representative organisation in the future and there's really been no plan from the ANU as to how they're looking to transition away from PARSA."

The ANU spokesman said the university couldn't comment on the employment of PARSA's staff.

"ANU is establishing a taskforce to ensure service continuity for postgraduate and higher degree research students. This will discuss options for the future. We are committed to maintaining services and will ensure funding is used for the best possible postgraduate student experience," he said.

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