The Tertiary Commission needs the sector’s expertise
We need to talk. It’s serious. We need to have a considered debate about the proposed Australian Tertiary Education Commission (ATEC), the gilt statue on the mantlepiece of the Universities Accord. But we need a focused debate. In a thousand conversations about the Accord through its development, we heard well over a thousand interpretations of what this buffer body might be, and do.
Central to the Universities Accord Final Report lies the establishment of ATEC, this new “buffer body”, the “system steward” for tertiary education. We need to scrutinise it carefully. Its design, ambitions and (a-/)political direction will likely have material implications for the sector. It is intended to provide funding to institutions, advice to Government, and system planning. An open debate should shape the ATEC into the body most needed for Australia, and the one best able to guide the sector to deliver to positive ends.
In every institution, and in the bodies serving the sector, there is expertise which will be a great resource for the ATEC to make things possible. There are specialists who bring a holistic picture so that individual institutions can fulfil all their functions in line with the legislative framework and institutional mission. Let’s draw on this expertise to make the ATEC the best it can be.
Summary
There are material choices in the options available for the ATEC – what it looks like, what it does, and how experts and stakeholders and governments come together. Attempting to make a body which meets everyone’s satisfaction might result in no-one’s needs being met.
Other countries have buffer bodies. Let’s avoid wasted effort and learn from their experiences to understand what good ATEC might do, and how it should be shaped to meet Australia’s needs.
Decisions made now will set ATEC on its path, hopefully for decades. We shouldn’t miss the opportunity to shape the body into the organisation which will deliver the most benefit. There’s significant and generous expertise within the sector which can help this task.
Buffering the sector
Some of the sector’s stakeholders wanted a task-and-finish group, an extension of the Accord process, and not a more permanent body. There have been arguments for a body led by sector expertise, and those who want to prevent recent sector staff from taking roles in the organisation. Some want the body to have the purview of research, others no truck with it.
It’s perhaps easy to see why this broad set of perspectives has arisen. The expectations of the ATEC are enormous. The Accord report expects the body to: set prices; regulate teaching qualifications; identify growth areas; advise government on all things tertiary; negotiate with providers; become the centre of expertise in the sector’s design; and so on, and so on. It’s become an easy dumping ground, a cheap place for policymakers to say “a future body will deal with this complicated issue”, the long grass of policy flung, not-inadvertently, beyond the next vote.
These issues really matter. How the ATEC purpose is articulated, how it’s designed, how it relates to States and Territories, how it embraces (or rejects) the sector’s expertise, its international resonance, will have material consequences for students, academics, institutions and the future of Australia in a global higher education context.
Does it matter how the ATEC operates?
If we take just one example, we can see how significant the ATEC might be. The Accord expects the ATEC to set the resource levels for domestic students through fees and the Federal Government contribution. Many governments (and university leaders, and parents…) have tried to find out the “true cost” of delivering education. But this typically is a circular exercise where consultants look at how resources are purportedly spent, or impose models which typically fail to capture the complexity of academic endeavours.
If the ATEC thinks in an accounting mode and pursues the Sisyphean task, maybe it will have more luck than predecessors. But it could also approach its role completely differently. Another way is to reflect on universities as “price takers” which bid (along with, or on behalf of, other organisations) to deliver services for the public at a price set by Government, and are regulated to do so reaching quality thresholds. It’s not that either approach to resource allocation is right or true, but that it’s material to the relationship with the sector as to whether the ATEC sees itself as micromanaging institutional behaviour or setting principles and prices after which the sector does the best it can.
The ATEC is coming. Alongside the May Budget, Education Minister Jason Clare established an advisory group to inform the design of the ATEC. There’s already been a re-shaping of the ambitions for the body as plans to incorporate existing organisations TEQSA and ARC seem to have been iced. Now is the window in which to think critically about the ATEC, and how it can be shaped for the best.
The origin story
Higher education buffer bodies have sprouted myriad forms since their inception and with widspread impact via the UK’s University Grants Commission (UGC) model. This model spread around the world. The US, India and China – the world’s largest higher education systems – have many such organisations, as do countries in Europe. There is much to be gained by looking abroad.
These organisations tend to have a board, an executive, and a dozen or so expert staff who synthesise evidence and concepts and situations and promulgate strategies for promoting higher education. They have a wide variety of legal and structural foundations. Australia had a buffer body until 1988 which formula-funded universities, and it still has organisations in the sectoral architecture which buffer in their own unique ways. The school sector has many intermediary bodies such as Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority and the Australian Institute for Teaching and Scholarship Leadership.
Why buffer Australian higher education now?
Hasn’t it already been pummelled by the pandemic, by geopolitics, by concerns around international student accommodation, by industrial relations reforms, less money for learning and teaching, and by dwindling research funds?
One reason is that, in advanced economies like Australia, higher education has outgrown campus walls, is advertised on public transport and at major sporting matches, and is bumping into governments and the community in more ways than ever before. It is no longer a small and rarified thing. Another reason for an ATEC is a retreat from international markets to a more nationally-administered statist approach. A slightly contradictory further reason is an attempt to depoliticise, to distance the politics and funding of universities. Buffer bodies are meant to peer beyond political cycles which rarely mesh well with longer-term academic rhythms.
When the shrink-wrapping is tugged from Australia’s shiny new ATEC, regardless of foundation, form or function, it will add new wings to the sector’s governance architecture. Personalities invariably play a role, as must ideas, evidence and character. The ATEC must build trust. It must promote quality and integrity. It must play with its international peers. Critically, it has to embrace academic and learner voices and aspirations, not just political, legal and commercial plays.
But even sculpting the wisest minds in the most elegant ways won’t save ATEC from the externalities which bump existentially into higher education. For instance, ATEC will have to deal with "quality" given the near ubiquitous digital and sessional hollowing-out of resources from teaching to fund research during the last two “world-class” decades.
Even if the ATEC (re)shuffles financial spoils to structurally diversify the sector, prestige and isomorphism remain weighty forces. What will ATEC do in terms of regulating in the "national interest", such as factoring in considerations around foreign interference, emerging sectors/technologies, academic workforce, and broader socioeconomic dynamics. Clearly, cultivating ATEC as the ballast of higher education in Australia will itself take years.
Setting up for success
Surely, the success of ATEC – whatever ‘success’ looks like – will be measured by how the sum of its parts function to provide intended policy outcomes for the betterment of the nation, and not for a select few institutions or ideologies.
The major opportunity for the ATEC is ensuring that it comprises senior experts from the education sector and industry. Regardless of who is appointed, the broad mission of the ATEC is one that will likely disappoint many because of diverging interests and views across the sector. The sector has failed to agree on many basic issues. Nor has it properly executed recommendations from previous reforms.
To mitigate disappointment, the first steps in establishment such as fundamental structure and size are important while keeping in perspective that the ATEC needs to exist for the long-term. An implementation blueprint is essential. There are likely to be some missteps along the process, but the smooth running will come in due time and success is built over years, not weeks.
In the sector, rigorous debate should be part of the daily bread-and-butter. But too much debate can be a detriment to execution and hinder institutional progress and therefore imperil decision making. The ATEC should be a forum for informed and enabling debate. The sooner the ATEC is established, and work gets started, the sooner we can start making inroads into improving the effectiveness and efficiency of our system. But that speed to implementation needs to be balanced with considered and thoughtful interrogation of how best it can operate.
We are well into digital era governance. Especially as a higher education agency, ATEC should be configured as collaborative, problem-focused, innovative, diverse and dynamic. Does a capital city office fitout full of senior people in grey suits seed this? Or a more devolved, porous approach which is more situated in a super-diverse country. Students and increasingly faculty are highly diverse – what about young people from broad cultural backgrounds, like those investing their futures in the sector?
Where’s the expertise?
For the Government to succeed in transforming Australia’s system of post-secondary education, it needs to embed, optimise and calibrate the institutional expertise that has made Australian universities a success story in the world. It is not a matter of building consensus among stakeholders’ present interests, but alignment with broader principles and strategies to ensure Australia’s tertiary education system is planned, delivered, funded, regulated and quality assured.
The task for the ATEC’s leaders is enormous. They will have the responsibility to steer the sector’s path, build trust with the state and civil society, and battle market forces. For the ATEC to deliver effectively we need to shift discussion beyond the leaders per se. We need to focus on expertise. That is, those who have been adept at translating vision, strategy, policy objectives and political realities into practice; those who have done the execution and the mundane practice of delivering agreed objectives, targets and commitments at the institutional level. At the end of the day, that is how things get done.
But there is a major risk that the expertise which exists within the sector will be ignored. The Accord’s panel was damning about the quality of expertise available:
There is relatively limited expertise regarding the higher education sector as a whole, and similarly limited capability in understanding complex interactions across the whole tertiary education system. While the Review was able to call on advice and assistance from many experts and stakeholders, it was not without difficulty, and demonstrated that there are considerable gaps in knowledge and understanding of this complex system. A forum is needed for regular and ongoing engagement, learning and best practice. As part of its policy role, the Commission should facilitate greater research and analysis on the higher education system itself, including its interaction with the wider national research system.
While it’s laudable that the ATEC should be charged with addressing this perceived deficit, the concern is that this point is accepted, rather than challenged.
How do we ensure ATEC works for the system as whole?
This takes us to the point of the required level of staffing needed to bring into reality the work ATEC will be responsible for. We say that a whole-of-system approach is needed for the reform agenda to succeed. ATEC will need to be staffed with those who have expertise in education systems, and in the broad spectrum of how civil society and market forces impact on everyone’s lives. Expertise that is independent and not subject to the vagaries of particular interests.
There is no need to set up complex and unnecessary bureaucracy. Past experiences suggest this leads to increased inefficiency and inefficacy over the long term. What is needed is to bring to the table those institutional experts who have done the hard work over the years in a range of specialist, distinct and unique roles. Those who have worn different hats and survived working with the tribes who inhabit the world of education, government, and industry. They will give their time willingly and expertise generously.
ATEC may be resourced from a combination of a core permanent staff, individuals on secondment from institutions and staff who may be drawn from other sectors for specific tasks and periods. There would be those whose role is to focus on specific domains of activity; be brokers between policy makers, university leaders and the wider community; brokers between people, processes and systems; be able to wrangle complex ideas and policy settings into a common purpose. Higher education has always been a forum for diverse views.
The implication of not embedding institutional and academic expertise into the ATEC could be dire. We have seen statutory agencies operate in silos and fail in their endeavours because they have not entirely comprehended what they have been tasked with, and not acted on what they were supposed to do. Let us not make that same mistake.
What’s next?
We can let ATEC be created as an adaptation, a reformulation of existing functions in the regulatory architecture of the sector. A few units from the Department of Education here, some regulatory functions from TEQSA there, a sprinkling of research expertise from ARC as a garnish.
Or we can aim for a Commission which harnesses the sector’s expertise, learns from others, and uses its status as a dedicated sector body to challenge and enrich the sector. Australia must aim for a ATEC which is grounded, ambitious, and leads the pack.
Much to be thought-through, and the time starts now:
What do we mean by a Commission? Does the name constrain our thinking about how the body can work, and what it might do?
Regardless of foundation, what does an ATEC look like institutionally, functionally, and in terms of contemporary innovative approaches to digital-era governance?
How will ATEC re-position Australia at the front-edge of global higher education in terms of governance, but more particularly academic practice?
How can ATEC balance different interests – stakeholders, experts, participants, institutional actors, inter-sectoral perspectives, etc?
Can ATEC play a fruitful role in reinvigorating higher education research in Australia, which is rigorous and public?
How can ATEC contribute to strengthening trust between the state and the various tertiary education stakeholders?
About
The Higher Good is a space in which interesting and impactful ideas are shared for the benefit of the Australian tertiary sector. It is all about public good. The space it fills sits between immediate news, which is well-served, and considered research on the sector which takes a longer view and which is also rarely timely. It is critical commentary with purpose.
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Contributors
This collaborative article was written by Ant Bagshaw, Angel Calderon, Hamish Coates, Sue Kokonis, and Nadine Zacharias
Get in touch if you’d like to contribute to the dialogue and/or contribute to a future piece: info@thehighergood.net