In an unprecedented intervention in the affairs of a university, the higher education regulator has directed ANU on how it will select its next Chancellor. And it announces former TEQSA chair Peter Coaldrake will head the hiring panel.
Chancellor Julie Bishop will step down in December at the end of her term. Her exit and the process to replace her was announced yesterday in a statement by Pro-Chancellor Larry Marshall.
Dr Marshall told staff that “after consultation” with the Tertiary Education Quality Standards Agency, the Chair of the selection panel and a majority of its members would be “independent.”
“The chancellor plays a critical role in leading the council and supporting the long-term direction of the university. It is important that this appointment is made through a process that is robust, transparent and commands confidence across our community,” he wrote.
He added ANU has voluntarily ‘formalised” the approach in agreement with the regulator.
Dr Marshall did not state how the selection panel will be chosen, but TEQSA announced late yesterday the chair will be former QUT VC Peter Coaldrake, the Agency’s Chief Commissioner from 2021-2024.
TEQSA will also specify “two independent experts” and it will have veto power over Council’s choice for two places on the panel. TEQSA defines “independent” as “relevant expertise and experience in higher education and in university governance,” although ANU did not respond to FC’s inquiry as to what “independent” means, in terms of possible connections with the university.
Dr Marshall also told staff he had “commenced a listening process with senior leadership to ensure the panel is informed by the university’s culture, values and future priorities.” Plus, there will be an announcement this week on how the university community can “contribute to the attributes we seek.” As for ANU activists, who have long argued for rank-and-file participation at all levels of decision making, their consolation prize is an invitation for the staff-created Governance Group to make submissions on “attributes and experiences” the next VC should have.
The announcement of Ms Bishop’s departure was expected across campus in the aftermath of her previous support for former Vice-Chancellor Genevieve Bell’s now-cancelled restructure. TEQSA also has an investigation of ANU’s Council’s performance under her leadership underway, originally expected to report this month.
The regulator has long called for additional powers over universities. Using ANU as an example, CEO Mary Russell told a Senate committee in November, “we find that we are reliant on persuasion rather than on firm powers to restrain the university from doing something or to require them to do something.”
But how they will use them on ANU surprised senior HE observers yesterday who say this is the first case in living memory of a regulator intervening in a major matter of university governance.
As to the outcome if Council rejects the hiring panel’s preferred candidate, TEQSA is silent, but it will require minutes and papers of meetings and “written reasons why.” They would have to be good. In October, one of the concerns about ANU the agency cited was, “the extent to which the current council is in a position to specify the selection process for a new vice-chancellor, including the leadership characteristics that should focus a recruitment and selection process.”
Comment: Last night HE optimists were taking comfort in ANU being the only university governed by Commonwealth legislation and suggesting Premiers would kick up if a national government tried this on at universities incorporated under state Acts. Pessimists were warning that giving State Governments ideas about how to meddle in university governance was unwise – as Queensland’s has just demonstrated at James Cook U. And realists were suggesting that with TEQSA and ATEC, government oversight of higher education had reached Peak Brezhnev and public sector stuff-ups meant the system would inevitably collapse, in as little as a generation, or two, unless it is three.