Regulator to take charge of ANU chancellor recruitment

The higher education regulator will take charge of the search for the next chancellor of the Australian National University (ANU), under a “voluntary undertaking” accepted from the troubled institution.

ANU has agreed that a “majority independent” panel will manage the recruitment and selection of a replacement for current chancellor Julie Bishop, whose term expires at the end of December.

The Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (Teqsa) will choose at least half of the selection panel, including the chair – already confirmed as former Teqsa chief commissioner Peter Coaldrake – and two independent experts. Two members of the ANU council will also be on the panel, but only after Teqsa accepts their appointment in writing.

The panel will specify the selection criteria, determine the recruitment process, choose an executive search firm, shortlist and interview applicants and recommend a preferred candidate. While the final appointment remains the council’s prerogative, the university will be given 30 days to notify Teqsa of the panel’s recommendation and to either accept the recommendation or provide written reasons why it has chosen somebody else.

The university will also provide Teqsa with minutes and papers of the council meetings in which the recommendation is considered, along with possible progress reports on the selection process.

ANU has also agreed that “targeted engagement” with the university community will inform the selection process. This includes an invitation for the ANU Governance Project working group – a collective of staff who have publicly criticised the institution’s oversight – to advise on the “attributes and experience” of the next chancellor.

The undertaking was approved by the ANU council on 20 April and accepted by Teqsa a week later. It effectively breaks a stalemate whereby ANU was barred from commencing the search for a new chancellor while Teqsa awaited a report it had commissioned into the university’s governance.

The report, by former public service commissioner Lynelle Briggs, is expected to be handed over in a month or so. It will look at ANU’s handling of proposed restructures and actual or potential conflicts of interest in the council and leadership.

Teqsa said the selection for the “pivotal” chancellor’s role needed to be “progressed in a timely way”, given Bishop’s looming retirement. “While Teqsa’s compliance assessment of ANU is ongoing, we are satisfied that the terms of the undertaking will ensure the selection process has the integrity and independence required to have the trust and confidence of the ANU community and other stakeholders,” the agency said in a statement.

The agreement constitutes an unprecedented intervention in the affairs of a public Australian university, whose governing bodies normally have unfettered choice over their own leadership.

However, the regulator has been under pressure to take the extreme step of sacking the entire council – a move it has reportedly been considering – following controversies over the university’s governing culture, transparency, savings plans, expenditure on consultants and characterisations of its financial problems.

The National Tertiary Education Union said the undertaking suggested that Teqsa had "almost completely lost trust" in the decision-making processes of the ANU council’s members. “In those circumstances, it seems unconscionable to leave them in place," said Lachlan Clohesy, secretary of the union’s Australian Capital Territory division.

"If they can’t be trusted to perform their core functions, appointed members of ANU council need to be removed. We shouldn’t have to wait until Julie Bishop’s term ends to resolve the leadership and governance crisis at the ANU.”

The university said the mechanisms proposed in the voluntary undertaking would help “address Teqsa’s concerns” while meeting ANU’s skills needs and the “wider community expectations of good governance”. The university is “committed to cooperating with Teqsa”, the undertaking says.

An Australian National Audit Office report into the university’s financial management of its restructure plans is also due in early May, while a separate report into the alleged bullying of a staff-elected council member may also be released.

john.ross@timeshighereducation.com