When the Liberals were in power, universities lobbied for an independent body to protect them from bolshie backbenchers and to lobby ministers for ever-more money and they looked to Labor to deliver.
But with the Australian Tertiary Education Commission, now waiting on legislation to get going, Education Minister Jason Clare has not given universities the friend at court they wanted.
Instead, they are getting an agency, optimally independent of the bureaucracy, that might, maybe, accomplish what reforming education ministers since World War II have had previous goes at creating. And that is an operation of experts that manages what many still say is a mission-impossible, respecting universities’ academic autonomy while co-ordinating members of a national system to expand the economy for all Australians, especially people disadvantaged for want of post-school education and training.
If ATEC can deliver, it will also go a ways to reduce community suspicion that old and rich universities are deep-state organisations that want what they want when they want it.
The way some of their lobbyists denounced bipartisan caps on international enrolments last year did not dispel that suspicion.
The Liberal Party recognised this before the election. Education spokeswoman Sarah Henderson was upfront about ATEC – calling it “another layer of educational bureaucracy at a significant cost”.
“There is no proper understanding of ATEC’s role,” she said, announcing it would not happen if she became minister. She was right on ATEC’s purpose. There are different ideas on what ATEC exists to do, and how it will do it.
At a policy level, Clare is clear; it exists to implement his University Accord inquiry to “build a better and fairer education system where no one is held back, and no one is left behind”. ATEC is to help create a system where 80 per cent of the workforce has a university and/or training qualification.
This is way more complicated and expensive than it sounds, involving billions of dollars for teaching and research at all public universities over 25 years, changing the way they work, including co-operating with the training system.
Rather than tear everything down to start again, as Labor minister John Dawkins did when he merged the separate university and college systems in the 1980s, Clare is creating ATEC to change the way the existing system works.
It is why professor Mary O’Kane chaired the accord inquiry and why she continues as interim chief commissioner of ATEC. The scientist and engineer was vice-chancellor of the University of Adelaide for five years around the turn of the century and since then has been chief scientist of NSW and advised governments and chaired boards on everything from research funding to urban planning. Her present appointments include chairing the Australian Energy Market Operator, which manages the nation’s gas and electricity markets.
O’Kane is a deeply skilled adept of the politics of policy process who understands education but stands above the ruck of university self-interest. If it is not her, the permanent head needs to be somebody with her experience and independence.
Whoever it is, they will have to deal with two vested interests who want ATEC to obey them.
Last year, the Department of Education was pushing for the commission to sit inside it and there are still ideas around about line-agency officials engaging with the commission’s operations.
And universities still assume ATEC should exist to advocate for them in their endless argument for ever-more money. The first thing it must do, a vice-chancellor tells The Australian, is announce when there will be “a sustainably funded system”. It is not going to happen, if it ever does, until the new agency works out what that means and if it can convince whoever is minister the cost is affordable and in the national interest.
That will take work, and lots of it. A close observer of the arguments to date says there will be way more policy than politics in ATEC’s advice to government. On the cost of teaching students, for example, the model used to fund universities (tinkering to deliver a predetermined conclusion aside) is around 30 years old.
What ATEC will likely do is commission a bunch of independent research on the actual cost of delivering courses and report whatever they find. If the conclusion calls for cash, “they will not be performing if they do not say to government ‘You can’t grow the skills and grow the higher education base on this amount of money’. It is going to be a very hard to walk a line between the sector and the executive.”
Then there is the really, really big issue that most university leaders would prefer ATEC ignore – creating a post-school system including higher and vocational education. Optimists in the training community think it can be done. Realists suggest “harmonisation” of courses and qualifications across sectors will be as good as it gets, and that will take enormous amounts of expertise.
Which is the whole point of creating a “steward” for the system. Previous advisory agencies suffered from an absence of expertise, of people who researched rather than administered universities. There are not many independent experts now (the same names keep coming up) but there are enough to analyse universities’ productivity to a depth never attempted. There is a precedent for this in the national health system, where there are multiple advisory agencies outside line managements.
People who watched the way the accord was created predict the first thing ATEC will do is set up working groups of advisers from within and maybe beyond the sector, to build bombproof cases on specific reforms that will survive direct hits from the mass of vested interests in education.
Over time, ATEC will interpret what government wants to universities and explain to them what they are going to get from the feds. Such skills will be essential in making work a crucial but largely ignored part of its process. The accord report recommended every university have an annual “compact” with government, setting performance targets, especially on enrolments.
While university managements may not like ATEC sticking its bib in, this could be the best thing it can do for them.
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