The head of the representative body for Australian universities has hit back at claims of a governance “crisis” in the sector, saying many alleged “failures” are in fact intellectual disagreements, broader societal problems or cases where universities have been damned for doing the right thing.

Universities Australia chair Carolyn Evans said “sweeping” criticisms of university governance often portrayed contested practices as blunders. For example, the paucity of staff and student members on governing councils was characterised as a defect.

“That’s not a governance failure,” Evans told the National Press Club. “That’s an intellectual disagreement about what university [governance] should look like. Universities moved away historically from…strong [internal] representation and started to say the people on governance bodies should represent the broader community, so that universities didn’t become too insular. You can disagree about it, but that’s not inherently a governance failure.”

Intractable social problems that nobody else had ever managed to resolve – including racism, antisemitism and gender-based violence – were also construed as university governance failures, Evans said. “[No] other institutional sector…has worked as hard to deal with those problems as we have. Just because [we] haven’t dealt with them as some people would like, that constitutes a failure?”

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Australian universities are accused of governance shortcomings so routinely that alternative views seem unarguable, with administrators castigated for overpaying themselves, giving free rein to consultants and slashing jobs and courses on flimsy grounds. Education minister Jason Clare regularly says that people unaware of these problems must have been “”.

But Evans said leaders were being censured for implementing “governance 101”. “When revenue goes backwards, you have to do something to cut costs,” she said. “That…basic principle of good governance in the normal world is starting to be held against universities. It creates the impression [of] lots of problems with governance.

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“There have been people underpaid. There have been conflicts of interest. Allegations of bullying…have been proved. They’re unacceptable [but] they occur in most sectors and industries. They need to be dealt with. Where we failed on that, we need to look at that pretty hard. And we’ve tried as a sector to do so.”

In the latest such reckoning, the Australian National University (ANU) has issued an unreserved apology for its treatment of demographer Liz Allen, a former elected council member who accused then chancellor Julie Bishop of bullying her in sensational testimony to a Senate committee.

In a with Allen, ANU acknowledged its “maladministration of several processes” and its “indefensible treatment” of her. “The university accepts that it has failed Dr Allen and that these failings have caused her considerable harm,” it said. An independent report on the episode has not been released and ANU’s settlement with Allen remains confidential, according to media reports. Bishop denies any wrongdoing.

Evans also rebuffed suggestions that the university sector had jeopardised Australia through its “naivety” about research security. “Ten years ago…there were some fair criticisms to be made,” she told the Press Club. “I don’t think we have a sector-wide problem any more.

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“A couple of researchers…have probably [been] a little bit silly, but does that create a national emergency that needs dealing with in some significant or substantive way? Universities are doing…far more to track foreign relationships, research and agreements than they ever have.”

Evans also doubled down on claims that Australia’s university autonomy was under threat, saying the government’s practices were becoming more reminiscent of those in China, Japan and Singapore, rather than traditional peers like Canada and the UK. She said that if university autonomy had been better protected, “there might have been more questions asked” about amendments to the Foreign Relations Act.

“We are all very serious about national security [but] we are…concerned about nebulous concepts like national interest,” she said. “Who gets to define what the national interest is? Does it change from minister to minister, from government to government? Does it depend on what was on the front pages of the paper the day before?”

john.ross@timeshighereducation.com