Sophie asks: Wasn’t there or is there going to be a paper released on the state of higher education? I have a vague memory of Labor doing an enquiry and then not releasing the findings before we started the election.
It’s a great question, and one that’s made quite complicated by the sheer number of reviews on higher education matters during this parliamentary term.
We’ve had the Australian Universities Accord. That was the really big inquiry, and it reported in Feb 2024. The final report had 47 recommendations in it, and some of these have been taken up. But there’s plenty more to do, and after a year on the shelf, many measures are still need urgent action.
Early this year, the Senate Standing Committee on Education and Employment launched an inquiry into the quality of governance at Australian higher education providers. This was partly in response to claims of bad governance and lack of transparency, complaints about the exorbitant salaries of Vice-Chancellors, and concerns about antisemitism on campuses. The sector’s regulator, the Tertiary Education Quality Standards Agency (TEQSA, for short), has been repeatedly chastised for its failure to handle the first point and the third. (It claims to have nothing to do with the second.)
We’ve also seen more targeted reviews into things like Research and Development funding in Australia, the National Competitive Grants Program and more. Neither of these have been finalised just yet, and we wait to see what will happen with these, but both are extremely important for the future of research funding in Australia’s higher education sector.
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The Gov is establishing a Tertiary Education Commission that would have the power to set/review the cost of degrees, among other things - perhaps price caps on VC pay?? The Commission is meant to begin in July of this year.