Growing row over Australian Qualifications Framework

UNIVERSITIES will be free to offer degrees that do not comply with the new qualifications framework.

UNIVERSITIES will be free to offer degrees that do not comply with the new qualifications framework.

But its architect believes eventually all universities will fall into line and offer only endorsed degrees.

At a Geelong forum last week, the chairman of the Australian Qualifications Framework Council, former Labor education minister John Dawkins, tried to assuage concerns that the revised AQF represented the heavy hand of government in university affairs.

He pointed to the recent fiasco of vocational education and training providers offering substandard qualifications to international students as evidence of the need for agreed national standards for the tertiary sector.

On Friday, the Ministerial Council of Tertiary Education and Employment will consider the revised AQF, which will enable government to monitor the content of university degrees.

The Group of Eight has been among its most vocal opponents, arguing that the AQF threatens the tradition of university independence..

In a sharp rebuke, Go8 executive director Michael Gallagher described the AQF review as a set of "politically preferred solutions looking for a problem" that heralded centralised government control of higher education.

However, Mr Dawkins told the Geelong forum the revised framework was developed in collaboration with the same people who had become its critics.

He clarified that legislation already provided for compliance with AQF standards but that governments had simply not enforced it.

Under new legislation, it would likely be the new tertiary regulator, not the AQF Council, that would monitor degree compliance.

Although not specified by the AQF Council, it is feared future university funding will depend on official permission to provide each degree, effectively giving the federal government veto power over the intellectual life of the nation's universities.

Under the revised AQF, universities still will be able to self-accredit degrees, but the AQF Council stipulates that a "clear distinction" would have to be made between AQF and non-AQF qualifications. The distinction would be highlighted on graduation testamurs and certificates. While they will remain free to offer their own degrees, Mr Dawkins said he anticipated that, in time, universities would offer AQF qualifications only.