Mission and Vision

Our Mission

Australian Catholic University shares with universities world-wide a commitment to quality in teaching, research and service. It aspires to be a community characterised by free inquiry and academic integrity.

The University’s inspiration, located within 2,000 years of Catholic intellectual tradition, summons it to attend to all that is of concern to human beings. It brings a distinctive spiritual perspective to the common tasks of higher education.

Through fostering and advancing knowledge in education, health, commerce, the humanities, the sciences and technologies and the creative arts, Australian Catholic University seeks to make a specific contribution to its local, national and international communities.

The University explicitly engages the social, ethical and religious dimensions of the questions it faces in teaching and research, and service. In its endeavours, it is guided by a fundamental concern for justice and equity, and the dignity of all human beings.

Australian Catholic University has a primary responsibility to provide excellent higher education for its entire diversified and dispersed student body. Its ideal graduates will be highly competent in their chosen fields, ethical in their behaviour, with a developed critical habit of mind, an appreciation of the sacred in life and a commitment to serving the common good.

Our Vision

The Australian Catholic University is Australia’s outstanding Catholic university and a leading Catholic university in the world. Teaching and researching within the great Catholic intellectual tradition, it is national in its reach, public in its relevance and committed to the common good.

The basic nature of The Australian Catholic University is expressed in its name. It is inextricably both Catholic and University, searching for, discovering and communicating truth in every field of knowledge.

Within this basic character, the University has three fundamental characteristics.

As a Catholic university, it pursues all its activities, including its research and teaching within the Catholic intellectual tradition. This necessitates a deep commitment to research, as well as teaching. It manifests itself in a continuing exploration of the sacred, the value of the human person and the common good.

As a Catholic university that is a public university, The Australian Catholic University has a Mission to engage fully and dynamically with its society. Critically, it is confidently, publicly Catholic in bringing the perspectives of the Catholic intellectual tradition to its society. It is inclusively public in its admission of students, its appointment of staff, and its receipt of public funding, all within the defining context of its unique Mission.

As a Catholic university that is a national university, The Australian Catholic University exercises nation-wide leadership in the Catholic intellectual tradition, grounded in a century and a half of achievement through its founding institutions. Teaching and researching in diverse locations across Australia, it is the definitive representative within Australia of the thousand year tradition of Catholic universities.

The Australian Catholic University chooses to focus on areas of teaching and research that are closely connected with its particular character as a university that is Catholic, and that is public and national.

The first focus area is Theology and Philosophy as being central to the elucidation, development and expression of Catholic intellectual thought.

The second focus area is Health, with a particular emphasis on the value of care, especially of the weak and vulnerable. Within this focus, The Australian Catholic University has a profound commitment to serving the great caring enterprise comprised by Catholic health institutions.

The third focus area is Education, especially in support of the historic Mission of Catholic educational institutions and agencies in exercising an option for the poor and vulnerable. This focus includes religious education, Indigenous education, and learning and leadership in education, literacy and numeracy.

The final focus area is the Common Good and Social Justice, as comprising the heart of Catholic social thought. This multi-disciplinary focus, notably in the liberal arts and social sciences, extends throughout the University’s teaching and research. It also grounds the development of the University’s graduates, who learn to think critically, act ethically and put the good of humanity at the centre of their concerns.