The university has budgeted $3 million a year to attract 10 ''high performing'' researchers in five specialist areas: governance, environment, communication, education and health.

The recruitment drive started last week with advertising in the London Times Higher Education supplement, with the paper's ranking of ''young'' universities the target of UC's campaign, with 13 Australian universities already in their top 100.

''We've decided to aim for [that] one particular ranking, although that will probably mean we'll hit some of the targets for many of the rankings, because there are an overlapping set of criteria that are used,'' Professor Frances Shannon, the university's deputy vice-chancellor of research, said.

''There's a whole suite of measures that go together to form an overall [ranking] score, but research is a key part of the whole thing.''

The recruitment drive comes after the university was criticised this month for axing language courses to try to combat government funding cuts while continuing its sponsorship of the Brumbies rugby team.

But Professor Shannon said the cost was a justified investment in the university's strategic plan.

''There has been a lot of consultation about the plan and about how we get there and the general agreement that this was something we needed to do in order to increase our reputation as a university,'' she said. ''With the reputation comes increased interest from students and hence the long-term sustainability of the university becomes stronger as your reputation increases, so that's what we're hoping for over the next four or five years.''

The $3 million is not likely to all be paid as salaries, with the university willing to negotiate packages to attract the right people.

''Often researchers will be attracted by funding to do their research … [they] will say 'I'd like to come but I'll need this piece of equipment in my lab' or 'I need a research assistant to work with me' or 'I need two students', so we'll be negotiating individually,'' Professor Shannon said.

The university has already achieved world rankings in the fields of governance and environment after a push in research two years ago, which it is looking to build on.

''The university has close to doubled its research income in the last four or five years and we would like to increase that significantly again.

''A new bunch of people who can bring in more income, and hence have more researchers working with them and more students working with them,'' Professor Shannon said.

''[That] ends up generating a cycle of increased income, better outputs, more students, so the cycle goes and the university develops an increased reputation both nationally and internationally.

''I think it's a very exciting time for the University of Canberra. We have grown our student numbers dramatically, we've grown our research activity … our publications, our income and our research students dramatically over the last five years.''