Coalition senators were curious about what the Australian Tertiary Education Commission (ATEC) will do – and so they asked in Senate Estimates.
Department of Education officers’ answers were expansive – as ATEC will be.
ATEC won’t be a regulator: “There will be certainly crossover and liaison and discussions and things like that, but they don't have a regulatory role like TEQSA and ASQA.”
Except: “They will share information. They will look at regulatory burden. One of the roles of the ATEC will be to actually examine regulatory burden. Part of that regulatory burden might be what's brought on by TEQSA and ASQA as the regulatory bodies.”
So, what will ATEC talk about not regulating?: “The three organisations will be working together around things of common interest. One of those, for example, might be international education. They will all have a role around aspects of international education to some degree, and those three organisations will be coming together regularly to have conversations about the work that they're doing.”
What Interim ATEC staff are up to:
- “Looking at student profiles, managing the 2026 transition year for the Managed Growth Funding system
- “Preparing for the 2027 changes which fully implement the Managed Growth Funding system as well as needs-based funding
- “Preparing for international managed growth and what that might mean for commissioners to make decisions in 2027
- “Established work as a pricing function, so there is a small team that is looking after pricing
- “We are also doing some work in tertiary and equity. The work of embedding needs-based funding and how that's going to be used within universities
- “We have a strong focus on First Nations … making sure that we are running the Indigenous Support Program”
But not compacts?: “Interim Commissioners are talking about what an enhanced mission-based compact might look like. It is inviting universities to think about that and to potentially provide, say, a mock future compact but nothing that impacts university funding right now through a mission based compact.”
What will happen when ATEC is up and running next year: Commissioners, “will work with each university and talk about what their mission is, what their focus is and what their role is. And part of the role they take is to look at the stewardship across the nation, and part of that might be a conversation of: 'well, you are doing some research here, but actually there is a university here doing the exact same research. Should we come together? Should you focus your research on something else, while this university focuses on the research that you were proposing to do?' “
So ATEC will decide courses?: No. “The Minister will write to Commissioners, providing them with a statement of expectations. Commissioners will then write a statement of strategic priorities, and those strategic priorities will become an instruction to universities to think about what goes in their mission based compact and also how they could best look at their current load and enhance it to meet the future needs within Australia. So it becomes another tool for Commissioners to be able to help universities think about where their priorities lie.”
So ATEC will decide courses?: “It is a negotiated position. I would not necessarily say the commissioners will be driving them to think about what to start and what to stop. … They will still have the Commonwealth supported places to enable them to do so. … Universities have their own governing bodies; they will be self-accrediting. They can still make those decisions. However, in terms of additional places, the ATEC may have a role in saying, 'These additional places are best placed in these particular locations or universities for these particular reasons.'”
Who will do the work: ATEC “will, at its peak, be staffed with around 100 average staffing level” There are 69 now, mainly Department of Education people doing the work they did in DoE.
But moving to ATEC, right?: Sort of. “The Commissioners will be statutory officers, but the staff will be Departmental staff, and the Secretary of the Department will still be the accountable authority.”