Canberra's high living costs won't be a barrier for students to study at the Australian National University by 2025, vice-chancellor Brian Schmidt has pledged.
A commitment to achieve gender equality between academic staff also features in the university's 2025 strategic plan unveiled on Monday.
Professor Schmidt said the university was striving to accurately "reflect the nation" and that wasn't possible if disadvantaged students were put off by the high costs of moving interstate and supporting themselves while studying.
"We have students from all sorts of backgrounds come and have to work several jobs in their first time at ANU and it's just not fair, and quite frankly not easy on them and it's a huge barrier for people to come here," Professor Schmidt said.
The vice-chancellor said within the next four years ANU would work on a new scholarship program which would support students to live on campus for their first year and then provide financial and pastoral support for the rest of their degree.
It is unknown how many students would be supported under the scholarship or what the criteria would be.
"It's going to take us a few years to ramp this up, but it really is to make sure that coming and living on campus, whether or not you're from Canberra or anywhere else in the country is affordable for any student and their family," Professor Schmidt said.
"The numbers that we want to commit to is whatever is needed and we think that'll be many hundreds, and the total price tag, we're still working out, but it's not going to come cheap."
ANU Students' Association education officer Madeline Chia said the new scholarship would be a positive step, but current students and their families were doing it tough financially.
"I think it's really great because it bridges the gap for low SES and first generation students to come to uni and have the same opportunities as someone who is more well-off," she said
"Despite this initiative being a good thing, I would like to see ANU give some substantial backing on how they will implement this in their strategic plan."
The third-year law and international security student said it was common for her peers to have multiple jobs to support themselves and that rental assistance was limited because Centrelink considers students under 22-years-old to be dependent on their parents.
About 1000 ANU students were stuck interstate due to covid lockdowns at the beginning of semester two.
Miss Chia is among the stranded students still paying about $430 per week for accommodation at residential colleges despite being locked out of the ACT.
"For me, I'm essentially paying for three meals a day, heating, electricity, and I haven't been there in five weeks," she said.
"It's a real struggle and it's absolutely saddening that so many people are unable to get back to Canberra."
Emergency accommodation bursaries are available to undergraduate and postgraduates who are experiencing unexpected financial hardship, while emergency grants have been distributed through the student associations.
The university's strategic plan requires each academic school to develop a plan to get to gender equality.
Professor Schmidt said the timeline would be different for each school and the plans would be based on workforce modelling by Professor Lisa Kewley.
"There are a whole bunch of different ways to reach gender equality and a lot of them depend very much on the discipline, so astronomy is different than history," he said.
"It might be quotas in some places if that's appropriate. It might not be in other places."
The new strategic plan coincides with the celebration of the university's 75th anniversary.
