Universities must change the way they lead in response to seismic changes in their operating environment and must take the fight up to the Government to oppose bad policy, Universities Australia Chief Executive Officer Luke Sheehy will say today.
In his address to the Future Campus HE People & Performance Conference in Melbourne today, Mr Sheehy will make a landmark speech, calling on Australian higher education leaders to be courageous in the face of extensive disruption.
“Partnership does not mean silence,” Mr Sheehy will say.
“The strongest relationships are not built on agreement. They are built on honesty.”
“When policies risk undermining students, research capability or Australia’s future prosperity, leaders have a responsibility to say so.”
While accepting that transparency, good governance and accountability are essential, Mr Sheehy will say that universities were being forced to divert significant time and resourcing to new reporting requirements and compliance obligations.
“Over time there is a risk. The risk is not simply that regulation grows. The risk is that institutions begin to internalise it. That caution becomes culture. That compliance becomes the organising principle.”
Mr Sheehy will warns against acceding to ever-more levels of oversight, lest universities “accept that more regulation is the price of legitimacy … (universities) are not compliance organisations. And leaders must ensure they never become one.”
His call for unity in the national interest is a circuit breaker, disrupting years of critical messages that university leaderships do not value staff and are out of out of touch with community concerns.
Universities are expected to continue to build Australia’s future workforce and deliver a range of outcomes through research, “all while navigating financial pressures, workforce challenges and growing public scrutiny,” he will say.
“The mission hasn’t changed, but the environment has. And when the environment changes, leadership must evolve with it.”
“Universities can no longer afford to lead from behind their gates,” Mr Sheehy will say.
“Not when public confidence matters. Not when policy decisions increasingly shape our operating environment. And not when the value of higher education is being contested in parts of the public debate.”
University chiefs must step up and speak up and build leadership in their organisations because the challenges they face are “too large and too complex to be carried by a handful of people at the top.”
“Leadership must be distributed, developed and nurtured across the institution” he will say in a call to arms for universities to unite as they face “one of the most consequential decades in our country’s history.”
Mr Sheehy will also point to Job Ready Graduates as a leadership issue, “the entire sector should get behind. Not because it is about universities. But because it is about students. It is about quality. It is about access. And it is about ensuring more Australians can benefit from higher education, not fewer.”
The speech follows Mr Sheehy’s recent address in Adelaide where he spoke up for university autonomy, “Who ultimately determines the mission of a university? The university? Or the government of the day?” he asked them
He offers an answer this morning that it must be universities when they show they know how.