The plan to be presented to ministers of state on Friday is expected to propose an expert council to oversee the university's governance, taking into account executive remuneration, board diversity and industrial relations compliance.
Universities are public institutions, but at their senior levels most decision-making is shrouded in secrecy, say experts such as Australia Institute economist Jim Stanford. Council minutes are no longer published and student groups complain that they constantly struggle to have an adequate voice in their deliberations.
“We are seeing the worst traits of big business infecting our public universities.”
Allison Barnes, President of the National Tertiary Education Union
Secrecy can also surround private funding deals at universities, including from arms manufacturers and fossil fuel companies. And most universities still do not report data on their responses to sexual violence as promised.
Ministers of state have already approved a new federal intervention to tackle sexual violence on campus, including the creation of a student ombudsman to handle complaints against universities, hailed by advocates as a watershed moment.
But ahead of a further crackdown on governance, some university directors have warned against over-regulation of the sector, warning that universities must remain autonomous.
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Clare has previously told this column that the reform will seek to strengthen independent oversight of universities, not government overreach. While universities are “autonomous and self-governing, the way they are governed has a real impact not only on them … but on the whole country,” he said.
The president of the National Tertiary Education Union, Allison Barnes, said that “the increase in appointees from big business to university boards [with] little or no experience in higher education … has coincided with an explosion of insecure work, wage theft and bad governance” on campus.
“We are seeing the worst traits of big business infecting our public universities,” he said.
But groups such as the Council of University Governors and the Higher Education Industry Association of Australia have deemed concerns about the composition of university councils to be unfounded.
Universities must operate like businesses, they argue, because of the tougher funding landscape they now operate in, including long-standing government refusals to fully fund research as other countries, such as the US and China, do.
Higher education expert Andrew Norton agrees that this incomplete funding model has increased rates of casual and insecure work on Australian campuses.
Universities are a strange hybrid, he said, “part public institution, part nonprofit and part commercial business, creating interesting governance problems.”
While the union might want universities to move closer to how they operated 40 years ago “as nonprofits,” Norton said, “governments are “more demanding now about what [they] desire of the universities”.
He said corporate appointees should not be kicked out of boards entirely, but agreed there should be more people from the public sector, particularly people with experience in higher education management.
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The Australia Institute's Jim Stanford said Australian university executives were “simply overpaid” compared to their international peers, and it was crucial the ailing sector reined in spending excesses, including soundproofed private bathrooms and lavish $127,000 parties for vice-chancellors. as this header reveals.
There have long been calls to rein in chancellery pay packets: a 2021 parliamentary inquiry in NSW found it was a leadership failure that vice-chancellors' salaries were sometimes “25 to 30 times more” than those of university staff, and urged the state. auditor general to review them.
The Group of Eight and Universities Australia have been contacted for comment.
