The Government wants to push more TEQSA power through Parliament.
Universities Australia is not standing for it, warning one proposal to compel university staff to provide information, “would shift TEQSA towards an investigative model more akin to an integrity commission than a quality assurance regulator … This approach must be reconsidered as a matter of principle.”
HE leaders were briefed by officials Thursday on proposed amendments to the TEQSA Act. UA responded Friday morning with a comprehensive rejection, “of a fundamental expansion of TEQSA’s powers” that “risk shifting the regulator from quality assurance to micro-management of how universities operate.”
“Institutional autonomy is not a privilege of institutions; it is the structural condition that makes academic freedom and freedom of speech possible in practice,” UA CEO Luke Sheehy warned in a letter to Education Minister Jason Clare. Mr Sheehy called for amendments to any legislation the government introduces in the one remaining House of Representatives sitting week of the year.
UA core concerns include:
- The proposed power for TEQSA to issue legally enforceable general directions specifying how providers must comply with the Threshold Standards. “This represents a profound and unjustified restriction on institutional autonomy.”
- Expanded information-gathering powers across the system, to investigate matters that “could” become systemic risks. “Without clear limits, this creates scope for extensive and potentially speculative regulatory intervention.”
- A general directions power that does not require amendments to the TEQSA Act, “effectively enabling TEQSA to introduce additional binding requirements without equivalent parliamentary oversight.”
- Empowering TEQSA to direct compliance with the HE regulatory Threshold Standards. “There is a fundamental distinction between regulating institutional compliance and directing institutional decisions,” UA warns.
- Risks to academic freedom and freedom of speech. “Non-enforceable Statements of Regulatory Expectations, such as those on definitions of antisemitism and Islamophobia, could become enforceable general directions with which compliance is a condition of registration.”
UA is careful to clarify its concern is not “TEQSA’s present intentions,” but what could come.
“In ordinary times these powers would likely be used sparingly. The risk is greatest in periods of intense political controversy, or under a future government more willing to bend institutions to its purposes. Those are precisely the moments when universities most need to function as places of contested inquiry, dissent and free expression.”
Comment:
We have been here before. Back in 2013, the then new TEQSA started throwing its weight around, to the extent that HE minister Kim Carr commissioned Valerie Braithwaite (ANU) and Kwong Lee Dow (Uni Melbourne) to have a look.
They found, “A strong message coming from the sector is that TEQSA has not adequately consulted or built effective relationships with the sector. In effect we believe TEQSA has been regulating the sector as an object, not as a partner. As a result, there is a lack of trust in the Agency and its ability to carry out its functions.”
Here we go again, just bigger and harder.