Who loves HE?

Opinion

Anyone who didn’t believe that higher education had a reputational problem in Australia would surely have been convinced over the past fortnight.

Recent coverage has amplified perception issues that have festered, manifest in rising concerns over social licence over the past two years or more.

The Australian’s piece alleging a cheating epidemic over the weekend prompted despair from many within the sector and furious agreement from some without. The article followed hot on the heels of articles and an editorial by the Sydney Morning Herald appearing to conflate an aggregate surplus across the sector with most universities being flush with cash. Then of course there have been stories on antisemitism, cost of degrees, governance. And we are just five weeks into 2026.

The reaction.

Following The Australian’s story, A Senior Partner at McKinsey, Chris Bradley, vented to his LinkedIn followers that ‘academic achievement is a mirage’; reposting a screenshot of part of the Australian’s story.

His post, which attracted quite a lot of attention, talked about his illustrious career in deciding whether to hire “some of Australia’s best young minds” and called for, “Obvious fix: old fashioned in person written exams, kill group assignments, return to serious marking scales. PLEASE.”

He said McKinsey were ‘I think at mck we are going to have to introduce all day written exams for applicants.”

In further comments he said, “I am not anti-AI, i am anti a shit education system!”

The McKinsey Partner post is interesting simply because it is a strongly-expressed version of many others that profess sufficient expertise in assessment, teaching and learning to pronounce judgement but also appear to have little recognition or perhaps knowledge of the evolution and diversity of responses to AI across institutions and disciplines. This is hardly surprising, given the diversity of opinions on responses to AI and assessment within the sector itself.

At the same time, veteran journalist Deborah Snow chimed in on X to support the Australian’s article, saying it was disturbing but “fits with what I have heard from a young academic in my immediate circle.”

Staff voiced their concerns, with a post by Curtin University’s Mollie Dollinger addressing allegations posed by the Australian’s piece at length, and calling for a different understanding and approach.

Meanwhile, The Age replayed a Washington Post story that US uni graduates were losing their edge compared to non-uni grads in the workforce for the first time in 50 years, in part because of vulnerability to AI replacement – but then quoted a workforce expert saying that it was an historic anomaly and demand for grads would significantly increase in future. Across at MSN (it still exists! I didn’t know) There is an article gaining a bit of traction suggesting that “It’s starting to look like AI has killed the entire model of college.”

What’s going on?

We have talked about social license issues for a couple of years. This is a straight up and down reputational crisis. If we were the mining, banking, or betting industries, enough differences would have been put aside, and enough money put forward to establish a strong public relations response, managed by empowered and resourced communication experts. I’ll explain the rationale for that later on, but one of the major challenges that we face is a failure to recognise how the media and public fora work and how to compete in changing the public narrative.

I have advised organisations and government on media and comms strategy for more than 20 years, so here are my thoughts to explain where we are at.

1. No media story ever captures every angle. The average TV news story includes one or two quotes. A newspaper article might be 400 words or so. They are created in haste most of the time, usually by people without an in-depth understanding of the sector. Media strategy is about a combination of informing when possible, responding concisely and quickly and finding proactive angles to occasionally get a positive forward. It is about addressing the questions raised, not trying to dismiss them as unworthy in the first place.
2. Some truths hurt (especially when out of context or not the whole truth). Are there students in existence in Australia who will say they cheated and obtained a good mark? Sure. Did they actually achieve a good mark via AI? Some probably did. Are there lecturers who believe cheating is out of control? Absolutely. Just as there are some who believe the sector is the victim of a capitalist plot and university managements conspire to indenture staff in some form of modern slavery. Future Campus and others have reported on AI and assessment and cheating concerns for a couple of years. Institutions have introduced new approaches, and TEQSA is monitoring. So there are threads of truth
3. A few vocal employers criticising the quality of grads is not surprising – or new. It is not, and never has been, a valid reflection on the qualities of all graduates, teaching, learning or assessment. One swallow does not a Summer make. Critiques often come from the more elitist times when they were at university, and a smaller proportion of the community was able to emerge with a degree. Will the critics stop hiring the graduates? No. Will they remove their own qualifications from their LinkedIn profiles? Hardly. Are there legitimate concerns? Sure. What’s a degree for after all, is it three years of training for a career in the finance sector, or foundational knowledge and skills that prepare graduates for life? I suspect the community expects degrees to prepare students for jobs – but public data on community perceptions of HE is so sparse, we don’t really know.
4. Time is not on our friend. Assessment change, new curriculum, new teaching skills all take time and historically have taken a lot of time. There is a potential to look like we are not doing anything while a huge amount of work is going on in the background. Also, it is difficult to expect people to pay attention long enough to understand assessment and pedagogy. Making sophisticated changes not only accessible but also compelling enough to compete with other news stories is a significant challenge. Just because it’s true doesn’t mean they are going to turn off MAFS long enough to listen.
5. The empire rarely strikes back. If HE was a homogenous sector or even a sector with broad agreement on some key issues, then it could stand a small chance of being an empire. We would have a single, clear position on some of these key issues and we could train up a black clad overlord commanding attention to state our position. We don’t have that. Universities Australia put out a statement relating to university finances to build clarity at least amongst journos watching after the SMH we-are-awash-with-cash stories, which was a useful move. But the reality is, the sector is so diverse, and views are so entrenched that Universities Australia must be allowed to focus on bringing people together, without also having to run the PR battle. Luke Sheehy as CEO and Carolyn Evans as President have important jobs to do, dragging people together and representing to Government, but they are not given the bandwidth, the resourcing or the mandate to step into a hard-hitting high impact comms campaign that would put the sector’s side of the story forward. They have the talent required, but require the support of a coordinated spearhead or spearheads for a campaign to redress the communications balance.
6. We are building on shaky ground. The impact of AI on the future of the workforce is unknown. The structure and regulation of the HE system is in the midst of government changes. The international HE environment is uncertain. The pace and breadth of change demands that we know why HE exists, who it’s for, and what its impact should be. That is not clear, not agreed and hence not known to the public. Probably. Again, the lack of knowledge about public perceptions is a huge issue.
7. Don’t wait for a fair go. Some of the news stories are based on narrow anecdotal evidence. Some are based on misconceptions of reality. Some are unbalanced. Some are accurate. This is the reality, and is not going to change any time soon. Playing the game in the existing close-cropped turf of the arena is essential rather than waiting for it to magically transform into a walled garden. We need to play in the public’s arena to be seen.

Solutions.

There is clearly a problem with perceptions of how the sector is handling antisemitism, ai and cheating, governance and costs. And that’s just so far this year.

1. RECOGNISE. Drawing on the wisdom of alcoholics anonymous, you have to recognise you have a problem before you can fix it. Hoping that the spate of bad headlines can be ignored, and carrying on as normal doesn’t work in an environment of spiralling regulation, where the Government controlling the levers is swayed by their take on public perceptions. The sector has a brand problem. The consequences are more regulators than you can poke a stick at and spiralling compliance costs.

2. PLAN. There is a tendency to ignore or even dismiss the input and expertise of marketing and communications professionals within institutions and across the sector. While leaders of almost every stripe will convene in Canberra in February, there is no meeting that we know of for marketing and comms people – meaning the comms strategy is left to people who are, all due respect, not comms professionals. This is weird. In what other sector would CEOs get together and exclude their comms people when they want to put together solution to a branding crisis? Get the right people in the room, allow them to provide advice, and develop a professional plan.

3. NEW LAUNDRIES – Dirty washing is constantly being aired by disaffected staff – we need a few new laundries. That’s a metaphor by the way. There are no shortage of staff willing to excoriate the sector. Some are well intentioned. Some are not. some are well informed and supported by fact. Others are not. There is far too much commentary from people employed in the sector who are self-interested, wrong and or confused/confusing. Academic freedom should also entail accountability and probably also some training – but getting back to the laundry thing, staff wouldn’t have to take to the media all the time if they felt like someone – anyone – was listening and acting within their institution. Friendly fire resulting from disaffected staff who feel like they have no workplace voice is a major issue.

4. RESPOND. Responses need to be concise, timely, in a language that the public will remember and embrace and sufficiently agile to respond at a time that works for the media and the public, not just for the sector. We have many talented leaders, but need coordination and strategy to build clearer messaging for the future.

Conclusion.

In short. Journalists are not the problem. The sector has been able to avoid playing the communications game until now. With intense scrutiny in place, severe constraints in room to grow revenue and momentum for sector disapproval in train, some would suggest it can no longer afford to be absent from the public’s chosen playing field.