Government faces challenges with the Accord Panel’s report
“I don’t think there’s enough detail… I would need to understand how it would work in practice”
TEQSA Commissioner Adrienne Nieuwenhuis’ answer to a question during this week’s Universities Australia conference (on the new Tertiary Education Commission and its potential impact on TEQSA and the regulatory burden on providers) served to highlight the significant challenges the Australian government faces in working out what and how to implement many of the 47 recommendations in the final report of the Universities Accord Panel.
The Panel’s recommendations have been praised by many in the sector – with very few people so far discussing the lack of detail in many of the recommendations – and crucially what that lack of detail will mean when it comes to implementation.
Unlike the earlier Bradley Review, which came with costings and more specific wording for many (but not all) of its recommendations, this report contains a raft of recommendations which as a former policymaker I think will flummox officials – if the government chooses to try and implement them.
Here are just a few of the more obvious examples of the lack of specificity in the Panel’s recommendations:
Recommendation 7d: “That to ensure students develop work relevant skills for employment after their study, the Australian Government increase opportunities for students to both earn and learn while studying by using models like degree apprenticeships that encourage an employment relationship as part of course design.”
How would the government do this? Currently apprenticeships are designated by state and territory governments, so what exactly should the Australian government do? How would it “use models”?
Recommendation 8a: “That to improve the speed and focus on meeting high impact skills needs, the Australian Government partner with select tertiary education providers, states and territories, industry, business and unions to rapidly provide students with innovative skills through supporting methods of quickly ramping up delivery, including through use of newly developed collaborative infrastructure such as the TAFE Centres of Excellence and the NSW Institutes of Applied Technology.”
Aside from the Australian government’s commitments to the TAFE Centres of Excellence and the NSW government’s Institutes of Applied Technology (IATs) – is there something specific that the Panel thinks should be done? Are they arguing for more IATs and Centres of Excellence, or do they think we need other, different but similar, initiatives? Should this ‘newly developed collaborative infrastructure’ be in any specific industry areas? Does this recommendation mean that the Panel thinks that the existing mechanisms will not be enough?
Recommendation 21e:* “That to improve student learning outcomes and prepare the higher education sector for growth in student numbers (particularly of students from under-represented backgrounds who need additional support) the higher education sector, in partnership with the Australian Government, improve the quality of learning and teaching through using proven innovative learning approaches which embrace online and hybrid teaching modalities.”
Is there anything specific or practical that the Panel recommends to improve the quality of teaching through more online/hybrid delivery, or are they just indicating that providers should keep doing more of what they are already doing but better? Does the Panel envisage that there will be a new funding pool or a new program introduced to help with identifying and introducing more innovative and proven methods of online/hybrid delivery?
Recommendation 28a: “That to develop a pathway to fund the full economic cost of university research universities charge, and governments and industry pay, full market rates for commissioned and contract research and consulting.”
Is the Panel intending that the government should do more with this recommendation than exhort universities to ‘up their prices’ for their consulting work? How will the Australian government make other governments and businesses pay more for university research. It sounds like a sensible idea (difficult to believe it needs to be a recommendation) but what does it mean in practice??
Recommendation 30 (c): “The majority of the Australian Tertiary Education Commission’s functions will start in higher education with additional priorities aimed at achieving higher levels of tertiary education system alignment, focused on student pathways, credit recognition and the Australian Qualifications Framework. The Australian Government should also negotiate with states and territories to expand the Australian Tertiary Education Commission’s role to focus on the whole tertiary education system, with governance arrangements reflecting the ongoing role of all jurisdictions in its future, and with expansion to take effect in the context of the next National Skills Agreement”
As the CEO of TAFE Directors Australia, Jenny Dodd, pointed out during the Universities Australia conference, TAFE Institutes (and the broader government-funded VET systems in each state and territory) are part of the economic arms of each respective state and territory government. Unexplored in the Panel’s report is why States and Territories would want to hand over these functions to an Australian government entity which will operate at arms-length from the Australian government Minister, let alone State and Territory Ministers?
31 (c) “That to improve capability and capacity of the workforce, higher education providers with Australian Government support improve professional development for all staff.”
I think the professional development of staff working in the higher education sector is vital, but the Panel provides no evidence that the current levels of professional development are too low or need improving, or any suggestions as to how to do this beyond recommendation 31 (a) which says the government should develop professional learning and teaching standards for academics and (d) provide opportunities for higher education staff to access training in research and research training, and in learning teaching. Is recommendation 31(c) therefore designed to make sure that non-academic staff also get professional development, and if so where are the areas where the Panel thinks their professional development needs to be improved…?
My criticism of the lack of specificity in many of the Panel’s recommendations should not be misconstrued as a lack of support for some of the major changes the Panel is suggesting government needs to make.
I support their changes to lift income support for students and make improvements to the HELP loan schemes, as well as the recommendations focussed on access and equity, and on First Nations knowledge and First Nations students and staff. I have written previously about the difficulties regional universities are facing and I strongly support the attention on them in the report. And there are other aspects of the report which I also see merit in (and I will discuss these in an upcoming episode of the ‘What now? What next?’ podcast).
The reality though is that it is specific practical recommendations, and not soaring rhetoric or grand ambition, that count when it comes to policy reform and we have a recent example of this in the higher education sector.
The former government’s Job-ready Graduates (JRG) reforms lacked an Accord Panel process, were not developed on the basis of any kind of substantial consultations, nor were they packaged up in a visionary strategic report (and hence they were dismissed by some in the sector as not being very significant reforms of the likes of Bradley or Dawkins). But the reality is that the JRG changes have delivered significant changes to university funding which have negatively impacted approximately 40% of undergraduate students and in doing so they have moved nearly half of all undergraduate university students to an almost full-fee paying model of public university education.
And at the same time the JRG reforms have reduced the amount of government funding per average student place – making universities worse off on average for each student they enrol.
While the Accord Panel recommends changes to university funding (including explicitly moving away from the JRG funding model) – the fact that, as Prof. O’Kane disclosed to the UA conference, the report has been to Cabinet and so far the government has not committed to implement any of its recommendations, means that it will take time for the Panel’s proposed model to be developed and implemented.
In the meantime the Panel cannot say, “because it’s too political” according to Prof. O’Kane (again speaking to the UA conference), if the students who have been impacted the most by the JRG reforms (those studying arts, commerce and law and paying more than 90% of the cost of their degrees) should have their student debts reduced when the new funding model is implemented.
Or perhaps that should be, “if” the new funding model is implemented…?
After all there is a Federal election due next year and no guarantee of bipartisan support for the Panel’s comprehensive package of reforms.
Which is why when it comes to major reform it is often the smaller and ‘easier’ practical changes which can have a lasting impact, while big picture reforms can sit on the shelf despite the praise heaped on them (and here I am specifically thinking of the 2019 report of the AQF Review which remains unimplemented because policy makers have found it conceptually too difficult).
Only time will tell if the Accord Panel’s report also ends up sitting on the shelf or if it delivers the sweeping reforms so many in the sector are expecting from it… One thing is for sure though – more practical, precise recommendations would have made it much easier for policymakers implement.
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* This is a typo in the report – it should be 21a but to allow readers to easily refer back to the report, I am using the Panel’s numbering.
