More oversight uni managements will hate

Chancellors who thought Jason Clare had let them off lightly will be thinking again.

What has happened: Labor senator, Tony Sheldon is calling for an inquiry into university governance by the Senate’s Education and Employment committee, which he chairs. (He floated a version of it last June),

What it would do: Senator Shelden suggests expansive terms of reference, which cover long-standing concerns from the National Tertiary Education Union. They include:

  • Staff not paid agreed rates and “broader compliance with workplace laws;”
  • Vice-Chancellors’ pay and conditions and conflicts of interests; and
  • Membership of governing bodies and accountability of decision making.

Why?: “There’s no other job in Australia where you can be paid so exorbitantly while performing so badly, with seemingly no consequences or accountability for the impact on university staff and students” the senator says.

Good-o, but really, why?: The day before Senator Shelden called for this inquiry, Education Minister Jason Clare announced an Advisory Council to oversight university governance. It is a very proper body, which will undoubtedly stick its procedural bib into the way universities are run. But the National Tertiary Education Union is not a full member – perhaps because Mr Clare did not want the Council to include knife fights in its standing orders. Perhaps because State Education ministers, who appoint all councils ex-ANU, did not want complaining calls from Chancellors.

There are winners: the NTEU, which now has a platform to announce outrage to its pals in the press. The Committee’s final report will be scathing. And Mr Clare, who now has an oversight agency to keep an eye on governing bodies and a political whistle to let academics who think they should run universities, let off a lot of steam

And losers: Universities with cases to answer on underpaying staff and whose executive wage bills are too big to miss are in for a horrible time, (evidence from the Fair Work Ombudsman pay fails will be interesting). Plus the Group of Eight who will be convicted for the high crime of being too big too rich (some might also say too successful). As of last week the Go8 had not responded to Minister Clare’s Council – they are going to like the Sheldon inquiry way less.

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