Students at the Australian National University (ANU) who have been sexually assaulted will soon have access to a full-time on-campus specialist counsellor.

The scale of the problem of sexual assaults at Australia's universities is expected to be laid bare next month when a national survey by the Human Rights Commission (HRC) is released and individual universities publish their figures.

Ahead of the report, the ANU has been working behind the scenes with the Canberra Rape Crisis Centre to have an officer based on campus five days a week to give students the specialised support they need.

Canberra Rape Crisis Centre chief executive Chrystina Stanford said it was a long-overdue measure.

"We have known that the problem is there and so has the ANU," she said.

"But thankfully they've been a whole lot more proactive than any other university that I've seen, around stepping forward to try and address the problem, which is where we come in with our counselling model."

The university grabbed headlines last year when five students were expelled from a Catholic residential college and two others suspended over sexual harassment.

A woman told the student newspaper, Woroni, that a group of men from Canberra's John XXIII College shared photos and videos of female residents' clothed breasts on a Facebook message group.

Earlier this year, male students from the same college were reportedly suspended during orientation week for chanting graphic and derogatory songs.

Counsellor to work on campus, five days a week

Universities mostly have general counsellors available and some have sex assault counsellors on campus for selected days of the week.

But the ANU appeared to be getting on the front foot of the HRC report out on August 1 by committing to a sex assault counsellor full-time, across five days.

Ms Stanford said the Canberra Rape Crisis Centre was prepared to add more resources to the campus, if the demand was greater.

"Given we're in a pilot phase we don't quite know yet how many people will come to seek help," she said.

"I guess that's one of the issues with trying to address sexual assault - or family violence or domestic violence in the community - we have vague statistics but we don't really know how big the problem is until we start trying to address it."

Announcing the counselling service, ANU vice-chancellor Brian Schmidt said the coming HRC report would help all Australian universities deal with on-campus sexual assault.

"The report ... is going to highlight I think for the first time how big a problem we have," he said.

"We know we've had a problem so we need to get on with dealing with the solution.

"[Counselling] is part of a grand strategy, I would say to be leading all institutions, not just in Australia - worldwide, in dealing with and confronting this issue."