Opinion
Mollie Dollinger and Amanda White argued here last month that assessment is one of a university's largest costs, that most leaders cannot see it, and that every program needs a live dashboard of what it assesses and how. You cannot manage what you cannot see. I agree with all of it.
I want to add one column to their dashboard, and show what it reveals. The column is cost, and the row that matters most is the secure lane.
Since TEQSA's guidance last year, programs are expected to show secure points of evidence that a student can do the work unaided. Many universities have landed on some version of the University of Sydney's two-lane approach: an open lane where students may use AI, and a supervised lane where they cannot. The supervised lane is where the assurance sits. It is also the one part of assessment whose cost cannot fall. Whatever happens to the price of marking written work, a viva needs a person in the room.
I teach finance and I am a CPA, so I did what I would do with any proposal. I costed it.
What a secure lane costs
Take a unit of 300 students that adds a short live oral check to an existing written task. The oral does not replace the task. It sits on top, so every dollar is new.
No university I know of publishes a price for a viva. The closest public figure is a casual marking rate, and an oral is marking done live, so I use Federation University's standard rate of $55.63 an hour. Its rate for marking that requires significant academic judgement is $77.44, probably closer to the truth. I use the lower one.
A 10-minute slot with one examiner is 50 hours, about $2,800. Fifteen minutes with one examiner is 75 hours, about $4,200. Fifteen minutes with two examiners, which is what moderation normally requires, is 150 hours, about $8,300. Twenty minutes with two examiners is 200 hours, about $11,100. Per student, that runs from $9 to $37, for one unit, before anyone has booked a room.
Why the real number is higher
Three things push it up. First, oral time cannot be spread out the way marking can. Orals need examiners, rooms and students in the same place at the same time, plus reschedules for the ones who do not show. TEQSA's own guide warns that secure assessment across many units "may create significant administrative overhead for scheduling, supervision and documentation". None of that appears in an hourly rate.
Second, the rate is a floor. In many units the orals are run by permanent staff, whose hours come out of research and preparation. The cash cost looks lower. The real cost is higher.
Third, it scales. A three-year degree has about 24 units. TEQSA's unit-level pathway puts at least one secure task in every one of them. At $8,300 a unit, that is about $67,000 a year for a single cohort of 300, and about $670 per student over the degree. Choose the secure lane at program level instead, say three units a year where the outcomes matter most, and it is about $25,000 a year and $250 per student.
The gap between $670 and $250 is a policy decision. Few universities seem to have made it explicitly. They have left it to unit coordinators, so the cost is invisible and the design is accidental. That is the problem Dollinger and White describe, with a dollar sign on it.
What the dashboard will not show
Here is what happens to a secure lane that nobody has costed. The 15-minute oral with two examiners becomes a five-minute chat with one. The viva becomes a question at the end of a presentation. The task keeps its name on the assessment map and the dashboard still shows a secure point of evidence. Nothing on the screen has changed. The evidence has gone.
A dashboard that shows which units have a secure task, but not what that task costs, will record the assurance long after it has been hollowed out. Cost is not just another field. It is the early warning.
So three decisions. Decide at program level which units carry the secure lane, and fund them for it. Pay the judgement rate, and count the coordination hours. And put the number next to the assurance it buys, so that when a budget tightens, everyone can see what is being traded away.
Dollinger and White are right that you cannot manage what you cannot see. The secure lane is the part of assessment most worth seeing, because it is the part that disappears quietly.
Dr Pedram Nourani is Assistant Professor of Finance at S P Jain School of Global Management, Sydney.
Sources
1. Dollinger and White, "The Next Frontier: Assessment as Investment?", Future Campus, 14 October 2026: https://futurecampus.com.au/2026/10/14/the-next-frontier-assessment-as-investment/
2. TEQSA, Enacting assessment reform in a time of artificial intelligence, September 2025, p. 8, Pathway 2 challenges table ("significant administrative overhead" quotation): https://www.teqsa.gov.au/sites/default/files/2025-09/enacting-assessment-reform-in-a-time-of-artificial-intelligence.pdf
3. Liu and Bridgeman, "Embracing the future of assessment at the University of Sydney", Teaching@Sydney, December 2023 (two-lane approach): https://educational-innovation.sydney.edu.au/teaching@sydney/embracing-the-future-of-assessment-at-the-university-of-sydney/
4. Federation University, Academic staff casual/sessional hourly rates, Union Enterprise Agreement 2023 to 2026, effective 30 April 2026 (standard marking $55.63; marking requiring significant academic judgement $77.44). No separate rate is published for oral assessment: https://internal.federation.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0010/613549/Salary-Rates-2023-2026-ACA-CasSess.pdf
Costing assumptions: 300 students; oral slots and examiner numbers as stated; all figures at the standard marking rate of $55.63 and rounded; a three-year degree of 24 units, eight a year. Workings available on request.