Lincoln University faces a 10-to-20 year process to turn itself from an under- performing institution facing merger or closure into one of the world's top five agricultural universities.

This was the view expressed in a report released by a Transformation Board appointed to assess its future.

Located outside Christchurch and employing 598 full-time equivalent staff for 26,491 FTE students, Lincoln suffers from "small scale, has a poor sense of strategy, and has weak relationships with key stakeholders and entities who should or could be partners".

This is despite its co-location with government research and science agencies, including AgResearch, with which it is constructing a purpose-built collaboration hub.

"The teaching offering and delivery is in need of an overhaul, along with the focus of research activities," concludes the report by the board led by senior public servant Maarten Wevers.

"It has in place a number of respected research programmes, and some gifted teachers and renowned researchers. But too few.

"Our suggested vision is for Lincoln University to become one of the top five globally-ranked agricultural universities, and one of the top five New Zealand universities. This will be no easy task," says the transformation board.

It recommends urgently upgrading the quality and processes by which it is governed.

"The university's leadership and management will need to keep (its) performance on the correct side of the Tertiary Education Commission's monitoring framework as any slip in operational performance could erode confidence in the turnaround and transformation strategy."

The university had "a long way to go before (it) is in a robust financial position" despite returning a small surplus after several years of deficits so far this decade.

The recently appointed chancellor at Lincoln, Steve Smith, welcomed the report.

"There's nothing we disagree with," he told BusinessDesk.

"It gives us a real opportunity to move forward by saying Lincoln should focus on those areas that it's been specialising in for 140 years but do it differently and do it better."

- Scoop