Universities Australia annual conference – one year on from the Accord

Universities Australia’s 2024 annual conference opened with a keynote address from Accord Panel Chair, Prof. Mary O’Kane.

Introducing the session, UA Chair Prof. David Lloyd described the Accord Panel’s report as “something which would be, if implemented in full, transformational for higher education in Australia.” He went on to note that the final report “had been heralded as the most important report since the Bradley Review”, to which Prof O’Kane concurred “absolutely”.

Prof. Lloyd concluded the session by telling Prof. O’Kane that for her work – most specifically leading the Accord Panel process “we are indebted to you as a sector”.

And yet at the just concluded 2025 Universities Australia Solutions Summit (at least among the sessions I was able to attend and with the exception of the Minister’s address to the conference dinner and UA CEO Luke Sheehy’s excellent address to the National Press Club), anyone attending this year’s conference might have wondered why the university sector chose an agenda for its conference which had no explicit emphasis on the Accord?

I certainly did.

Is the issue that the Accord report was not really as transformational as initially described, now that everyone has had time to read it carefully and think through its recommendations?

Well, one former leader in the sector did describe it to me as reading like something written by ChatGPT…

Or could there be another reason (and if so, what is it?) as to why, as Australia heads into the next Federal election, university leaders did not want to use their annual conference to discuss topics such as:

• Early insights on the demand for the new Fee Free Uni Ready places and additional support mechanisms being introduced in different universities to try and ensure strong completion rates for these new cohorts of students?
• Best practice in lifting participation and completion rates by students from identified equity groups like First Nations students and students with disability (equity being a key focus of the Accord)?
• How well prepared are universities for the Prac Placement payments which are due to roll out from July this year (as I pointed out many months ago – there are real issues for universities in relation to the fact they will be administering means-tested payments to their students. If they get the means-testing wrong there will be significant implications for students)
• Improving the student experience – are there any lessons to be learned from private universities which consistently top the annual QILT ratings (or is it just that most of them have smaller class sizes?), and/or what can be learned from the public universities which have had the greatest improvements on the QILT student experience surveys in the last few years?
• How to successfully balance the benefits of high quality, engaging, online teaching with student sentiments about the loneliness of their study experiences nowadays?
• Best practice university governance – the recent TEQSA conference had two University Chancellors and the CEO of the Australian Institute of Company Directors on a panel discussing this vitally important topic, but it didn’t feature at the universities’ own annual conference?

A number of colleagues who attended the conference described the program to me as a “missed opportunity”. I can’t help but think they were right.

Some found the heavy emphasis on speakers from the UK to be unusual. Of course there are lessons Australia can learn from our counterparts in Britain – but instead of observations about how many extra British backpackers there are now in Australia as a result of the UK-Australia Free Trade Agreement – we could have been hearing the observations of university leaders from Singapore, India, Indonesia or a myriad of other important geopolitical partners – and considering more opportunities for ongoing dialogue and engagement.

On Wednesday evening, after the conference had concluded, the Prime Minister launched Australia’s new “Roadmap for Economic Engagement with India”. He did so at Deakin University – but despite this clear signifier of India’s importance to Australia, I wasn’t in any conference session where I recall India even being mentioned…

Instead there were sessions on topics such as “Understanding Trump’s America 2.0” and a conversation with Kathleen Folbigg and her solicitor. Topics of general interest – yes – but topics that are vital to Australian higher education in 2025…? In my view the answer has to be “not really”.

The greatest missed opportunity though was the panel session on Tuesday afternoon “Voices of tomorrow: redefining the student experience” – where the panel comprised the Chancellor of James Cook University and representatives from two of the conference sponsors: Vygo and Unisys. Not only were none of the panellists current students – but in drawing from his own experience as a student, the Unisys representative reflected on the on-campus residential model “17 year olds leave home for” – which may remain a dominant feature of higher education in North America where he studied, but which has never been a key feature of Australian higher education. Despite the moderator’s best efforts the session felt more like a promotional pitch from two of the panellists on the need for universities to streamline their systems to provide better student support – and of course handily, there were a couple of relevant tech platforms available to help them do just that.

At a time when international education is in such a state of flux – and with many universities under significant budget pressure as a result of the ‘caps’ and different Ministerial Directions – there were mixed messages on international education in different conference speeches – but no specific session on this vital issue.

It was also surprising and disappointing to see that in the concurrent sessions on Day 2 – the research being shared came from commercial consulting and polling companies – and not from the research powerhouses that are our universities.

Finally – a colleague raised with me the timing of the conference… which of course is during ‘O Week’ for many universities. Surely, they suggested, this is a time when university leaders should be on campus, engaging with students?

I am embarrassed to say I had not been thinking about O Week – but of course they are right.

If the conference program is compelling – then the case can be made for having the sector’s leaders in Canberra while at least the Senate is sitting, instead of them being on campus at this important time of year. The questions that arise though are (a) did this year’s event reach that compelling standard, (b) what would students and their parents think about the timing of the conference, and (c) what would their views be on where university leaders’ focus should be as students start their tertiary education?