Departing Universities Australia CEO counts off the wins

Catriona Jackson says that four “totemic” achievements stand out from her five years as Universities Australia chief executive.

Catriona Jackson CEO of Universities Australia.

Reflecting on her five years as chief executive of Universities Australia, Catriona Jackson says four key things stand out as “totemic” changes she is proud to have been part of.

She names the four as the ­Albanese government’s reforms to the Australian Research Council that gave it far more political independence; the establishment of the University Foreign Interference Taskforce to work with government to protect national security; the successful effort to win $1bn of top-up research funding from the Morrison government during Covid; and the emergency effort by universities to continue teaching online during pandemic lockdowns.

Legislation for the ARC reforms is now before parliament and will set up a governance structure to distance the research funding body from the education minister. It limits the powers of the minister to interfere with funding decisions, although the minister retains full veto power in matters affecting security, defence and international relations.

Over the decades, Coalition education ministers have overridden ARC recommendations on numerous research grants, which Jackson says was “deeply corrosive”. “I remember researchers approaching me in tears,” she says.

In another governance change, the new legislation also makes the board responsible for appointing the ARC chief executive, rather than the minister.

Jackson said the establishment of the University Foreign Interference Task Force in 2019, which brought universities and government together to deal with security risks around university research, was another real achievement. At that time concern about China and other foreign interests accessing sensitive research was rapidly increasing.

Jackson said the UFIT mechanism “does stand us in incredibly good stead as we enter even more uncertain geopolitical times”.

She said the Morrison government’s 2020 decision to give universities an extra $1bn in research funding to help cope with the financial disruption of Covid “made an enormous difference”.

“That was a huge range of individuals, both inside the (university) sector, outside the sector, in research, in industry, all talking with the same voice on the extraordinary importance of boosting funding for research during that extraordinarily difficult period.”

Jackson’s fourth pick is the extraordinary effort made by all universities to put courses online when the first lockdown hit in 2020.

“Lecturers and tutors who were struggling just as all the rest of us were, with their kids studying from home, with their lives turned upside down, transitioning those courses to online so that people could just get on with it and keep on studying,” she says.

Jackson leaves the chief executive role at the end of this year.