Australia’s new higher education steward will determine the priorities for Australian universities, both individually and collectively, as well as setting the threshold standards institutions must meet to be registered in the first place.

The Australian Tertiary Education Commission (Atec) will have the power to suspend the “mission based compacts” of universities that “fall below” its expectations, and punish universities for not having active compacts, according to an for Atec’s founding legislation.

The watchdog will distribute university places to ensure that institutions achieve their “mission” in “supporting national priorities”. Future allocations of student places will be “informed” by universities’ performance against the compacts.

National priorities, oriented around workforce and student demand, will be outlined in statements issued by Atec every two years, “drawing on” dictates from the education minister. The minister can give Atec commissioners written directions about the way they perform their work, and delegate these powers to senior public servants.

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The commissioners will report to the education and skills ministers but their staff will be civil servants “made available” by the secretary of the education department.

Details of the Atec bill, introduced into parliament on 26 November, have not allayed sector concerns that the new body risks turning universities into vassals of the public service – and, by extension, the government.

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“In our view, the Atec needs to be a genuinely independent body to the…Department of Education,” said Universities Australia CEO Luke Sheehy, describing the bill as a “starting point”.

A source said some of the more punitive aspects of the bill – such as provisions allowing the minister to sack Atec commissioners and Atec to impose “default” compacts on universities – were “contingency” clauses for extreme circumstances. Similar measures had been inserted in the original versions of the ����Vlog Support Act and the higher education regulator Teqsa’s legislation, but never used.

The source was more concerned that the bill gave Atec no scope to choose its own staff or import expertise from the sector. “The commissioners need to be able to hire the people they need, rather than people the secretary wants to give them. They control who they’ve got working for them, the data they can collect and the analysis they can make – that’s the key thing for making this succeed.”

Monash University policy expert Andrew Norton said Atec staff would be departmental employees incentivised to “please” their “long-term master, which is the department”. He said Atec risked being blighted by “revolving door” appointments with limited knowledge of the sector, because public servants often earned promotions by transferring to “a totally different area”.

Norton said the bill gave Atec “extensive powers to set enormous numbers of conditions”, while constraining its sphere of influence. The agency is obliged to publish a “state of the tertiary education system report” every year and a “statement of strategic priorities” every two years, but otherwise can advise the minister only “if requested”.

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“It’s not particularly independent of either the department or the minister,” Norton said.

“Formal independence is a foundational element of the Atec’s design,” the bill’s explanatory memorandum insists. Education minister Jason Clare said the agency’s role would be to provide “expert, independent advice”.  

“It will be able to undertake its own research,” he pointed out, in a prepared speech introducing the bill into parliament. “Its staff will be directed by the Atec commissioners, governed by a service-level agreement with the Department of Education.”

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Clare said Atec’s formation was arguably the most important recommendation from the Australian Universities Accord. He said the bill was “the next step in a long story of reform” that had begun with the establishment of the first Universities Commission in 1943.

Norton said the bill prevented the minister from giving Atec directions about individual universities. “That’s good, but Atec will still work on a pretty narrow set of objectives…about achieving the government’s goals around participation, attainment, industry engagement, et cetera.

“There’s no mention…of any kind of intrinsic interest or other aspect of what higher education has done historically. This is basically the obliteration of the idea that universities have purposes independent of the government of the day.”

The government originally intended Atec to begin formal operations in January, subject to passage of legislation. The start date has now been pushed back to March at the earliest. A Senate committee is expected to enquire into the bill, whose provisions will not apply until 28 days after it receives royal assent.

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Atec’s power to allocate student places will be enshrined in separate legislation introduced next year.

john.ross@timeshighereducation.com