University bosses must denounce bad policy, says UA chief

Higher education leaders must have the “courage” to call out bad policy, particularly about the mushrooming regulatory load that threatens to “suffocate” the sector, according to Universities Australia CEO Luke Sheehy.

Sheehy will tell a Melbourne forum that escalating pressures on the academy – more regulation, more scrutiny, more contestability, more expectations and “in many cases fewer resources” – demand a more combative leadership style.

“The mission hasn’t changed but the environment has,” Sheehy will tell Future Campus’ HE People and Performance conference. “And when the environment changes, leadership must evolve with it.

“Disruption is no longer the exception. It’s the operating environment.”

According to speech notes, Sheehy will highlight research funding, the Job-ready Graduates scheme and the government’s treatment of international education as areas where university leaders should be “building the case for something better”.

He will single out compliance burden as a drag on the sector. “Leadership isn’t only about speaking up when policies are wrong,” the speech says. “It’s also about resisting the temptation to accept that every problem requires another layer of process.

“The risk is not simply that regulation grows. The risk is that institutions begin to internalise it. That caution becomes culture; that compliance becomes the organising principle. That we…accept that more regulation is the price of legitimacy. Universities are not compliance organisations and leaders must ensure they never become one. Accountability should strengthen universities, not suffocate them.”

Sheehy, a former education policy adviser in the offices of Labor Party frontbenchers, is taking an increasingly pugnacious approach to what he considers an “interventionist” government.

In May, he told the Australian Higher Education Industrial Association conference that the establishment of the Australian Tertiary Education Commission (Atec) showed that Canberra wanted “a much stronger hand on the wheel of higher education policy”.

A body intended as an independent steward risked morphing into a “controller”, Sheehy said. “Stewardship cannot become central planning,” he warned. “Coordination cannot become regulatory overreach.

“The sector does not need another body adding duplication, reporting obligations and administrative burden. It needs a body capable of simplifying the system.”

He said Atec-negotiated mission-based compacts had “merit” if they produced “greater clarity around institutional missions” and “a more strategic conversation” between government and institutions. “But…if these compacts become instruments of control rather than partnership, we will have fundamentally changed the relationship between universities and the state.

“Who ultimately determines the mission of a university? The university? Or the government of the day?”

He said the higher education regulator Teqsa’s recent intervention in the recruitment of the next Australian National University chancellor seemed a “threshold moment” where the regulator moved beyond compliance and quality assurance to issues of institutional governance and operational decision-making.

Teqsa’s move has split the sector, with some accusing the regulator of illegal overreach and others insisting its action was both legal and necessary. But Sheehy said the episode raised “bigger questions” about universities’ self-determination.

“Will institutions increasingly be expected to align with a model implicitly shaped by regulators and government expectations? Once autonomy is eroded, it’s very difficult to get back. At the very moment governments are asking universities to be more entrepreneurial, more innovative and more responsive to industry, the system is simultaneously becoming more centralised, more risk averse and more tightly controlled.

“You cannot compliance-framework your way to innovation. And you cannot build globally competitive universities while treating them like delivery agencies of government.”

john.ross@timeshighereducation.com