The Australian Tertiary Education Commission (ATEC) is about to be in business, with the Senate passing legislation late Monday. It now returns to the Reps for agreement and then will be off to the Governor-General.
As expected, the Greens got a bunch of what they asked for. The Education Minister has less (but still plenty) of power to boss ATEC about. The Higher Education Standards Panel continues as a Committee of the Commission. ATEC’s brief includes oversighting research. And the Act now includes reference to, “the public-focused mission of higher education, the importance of academic freedom and the crucial role of higher education in developing knowledge and critical inquiry for the benefit of society”.
There are also more commissioners (five in total) and they will be statutory appointments.
But what the Greens and some other Senators most wanted they did not get – ATEC empowered to advise on student contributions to course costs, as a way to shame the Government into ending the Job Ready Graduates fee schedule.
“We are four years into the Albanese government and today we have another Higher Education Bill but still no change. Labor really is all talk and very little action. They won't even allow the ATEC to give them advice on student contributions, because they know exactly what that advice will say, and this Government doesn't want to hear it,” The Greens’ Mehreen Faruqi said.
To which Jess Walsh, the Minister with carriage of the legislation in the Upper House, replied the interim ATEC is already on to the cost of study, with activity-based funding expert Stephen Duckett, “providing advice on the efficient cost of higher education across disciplines and student cohorts.”
“We are taking the Universities Accord recommendations to reduce student contributions and reform HELP repayment arrangements one step at a time,” Senator Walsh said.
She did not mention that the Innovative Research Universities group estimates the cost to Government of abolishing the previous Coalition Government’s JRG model at $1.9bn.
It was a political loss for the Greens, in what is a policy triumph for Education Minister Jason Clare who in four years has forced the university system to accept that regulating them as agents of government policy is in their interest.
As South Australian Labor senator Charlotte Walker said in the debate: “ Universities will have to be clearer about what they're there to do and what their goals are, and how that lines up with national and local needs—and I don't think that's some outrageous ask. If institutions are receiving public support, it's fair to expect them to be thinking about students, communities, workforce needs and outcomes, not just operating in their own bubble.”
After three years plus of policy-direction discussion since the Accord HE re-design was announced, the lobbies were uncharacteristically quiet. Universities Australia was quick, just after the legislation passed, to complain about inaction on JRG, but otherwise accepting that “ATEC will play an important role in bringing long-term coordination and stability to higher education.”
And the representative of people who will have to live with the new system, the Council of Australian Postgraduate Associations is qualified in its praise but optimistic in what it hopes ATEC can become. “There is a future where ATEC becomes the genuine, independent steward Australia’s higher education sector needs. Today’s higher education legislation gets us closer to it.”