Jason Clare’s final legislation establishing ATEC aims to expand university access for disadvantaged Australians. The Government’s solution to make that happen involves extending official powers on what and how many people universities teach.
The Opening the Doors of Opportunity Bill, now before the Senate, details in extensive detail how publicly-funded undergraduate places will be allocated across providers. Its explanatory memorandum covers 492 legislative specifics.
But peak body Universities Australia (UA) tells the Senate Committee set to consider the Bill that it involves overreach.
“It gives the Minister and the ATEC greater influence over the number of places universities can offer, the conditions attached to those places and, potentially, the allocation of international students,” … giving government, “excessive power to direct individual universities,” UA will say in their submission to the committee.
It is not that UA distrusts ATEC, accepting, “it will require sufficient flexibility to administer the system efficiently and respond to changing circumstances.”
“However,” the lobby warns, “there is an important distinction between routine administration and decisions that determine the size, structure and core operation of the higher education funding system.”
UA’s takeaway is, “the question is not whether government should provide national stewardship or whether the ATEC should play a central role in the system. Both should.
The question is whether the Bill strikes the right balance between that stewardship and the autonomy universities need to fulfil their missions.”
UA accordingly proposes seven sets of amendments, which would collectively require a great of drafting to deal with unintended consequences to what is already close and complex regulation.
What Senators will say in committee about policy details is hard to imagine, but what is a sure-thing is that Greens and Independents will bring up the Job Ready Graduates funding model, which the Bill does not mention.