Source: Murray Darling Basin Authority
JULIE HARE, EDUCATION EDITOR, THE AUSTRALIAN FINANCIAL REVIEW: Okay. My first question: you mentioned the governance review and the expert panel chaired by Melinda Cilento. A week ago we witnessed some shocking evidence presented to a separate Senate inquiry. What was your reaction to that evidence, and has it reshaped your thinking about university governance?
JASON CLARE, MINISTER FOR EDUCATION: I think if you don’t think that we’ve got challenges with university governance you’ve been living under a rock. Whether it’s the evidence of sexual assault and harassment at universities or in student accommodation, whether it’s evidence of wage theft in our universities or whether it’s the really distressing evidence that we witnessed last week in the Senate inquiry. All of this tells us that university governance is not up to scratch and that we need to fix it. That is fundamentally what that work by Melinda and her team is all about.
It’s one part of what we need to do. We’ve already established the Ombudsman. I spoke today about the need to give TEQSA better powers so that it has the tools it needs to be able to improve university governance as well. But Melinda’s work is critical as well. It really will come to us in two parts. I described in my remarks just a moment ago a set of recommendations that we expect to receive for Ministers to consider but also a set of principles that I am hoping that all universities will sign up to. And this is not being done in a vacuum. Melinda and her team are working with universities and unions and others as they craft this report.
HARE: So how does the Senate inquiry actually kind of work with this inquiry? Because they seem to be running in parallel but not together.
CLARE: The Senate inquiry will provide us with an interim report and recommendations ahead of Melinda’s report. I’m expecting that we’ll receive that report from the Senate, I think in early October. And Melinda’s report, the expert council’s report, will be considered by Education Ministers around about the 17th of October when Education Ministers next meet.
HARE: And have you got a sense, any sense, of where it’s heading?
CLARE: I haven’t received the report yet.
HARE: You haven’t?
CLARE: I have not. I’ve met with Melinda and been briefed on the work that they’re doing. But I’ve also met with key stakeholders in this room about the work that they’re collaborating with the expert team on. I’ve got a sense of the principles that they’re putting together and the recommendations that they might present to us, but I don’t have the report and even if I did, I wouldn’t want to pre-empt the outcome of it.
But I do make the fundamental point that we need to reform and improve university governance. This is not about belting universities. I’d hope after four times at this conference and all of the things that I’ve said and done in the portfolio people have a sense of who I am. I want to work together with everybody. I’m encouraging everybody to lean into this, make sure that the principles that are designed are principles that all universities can sign up to or, if they can’t, they can explain why not. And so we’ve got about six weeks before that report is finally considered by Ministers at the Education Ministers meeting.
HARE: Okay. Before I ask my second question, I know there’s a lot of people in the room, it’s a very rare occasion that you actually get to ask the Minister questions, so if you’ve got questions, please put them into Slido and I will share them. Now, in your speech you also say there will be an additional 200,000 students in a decade – that’s 20,000 a year. How do you see the system evolving to absorb that number given the fact that Australian universities are very large by international standards, or is the idea that there’s more disadvantaged students and the regional unis grow and the others kind of stay where they’re at?
CLARE: Not necessarily. And this will be something that the ATEC team develop and design in the compacts that they prepare with each university over the course of next year to 2027 but more fundamentally over the next decade.
Certainly as I think about this I think about the outer suburban universities, I’m tempted to name them, but I won’t, that I think are capable of doing a lot of the heavy lifting here in boosting the number of people from disadvantaged backgrounds in universities. Some regional universities will grow as well as the needs-based funding system helps, supports and encourages them to do that. But other regional universities because of specific reasons, sometimes depending on where they’re located, might stay at the same size. And the way to get the design of the system right is to have one steward who can help make those decisions and get the sector to work together.
I talked in my remarks about the hunger games that sometimes exist at the moment where some universities are growing quicker than others. Some universities have grown quite significantly in the last 12 months. And that helps to account for the record numbers this year. But not every university; there’ll be some universities in the room today that will say that, “Well, that’s not us.” And Mary’s not with us, I don’t think today, but if Mary or Barney were here, and you might throw this to Barney if you get a chance, what the ATEC team want to do is try and build a system rather than have universities constantly competing against each other. So that’s what the new model is designed to achieve.
HARE: Okay. I don’t want to be too cynical – but can’t help it. It wouldn’t be me without being cynical. But, you know, we watched – some of us who have been around for a while remember back in the early 2000s when Kim Carr introduced compacts. You know, there was a great deal of enthusiasm and expectation around compacts and then they just ended up being rather bureaucratic documents that outlined a few specific figures. Why is this compact system – the idea sounds profoundly good, that you can actually speak to the very mission of every university and individualise that institution. So why is it going to work this time and it didn’t last time?
CLARE: And, again, I think you’re going to have to give it time because the first compacts may look quite different to the compacts in 10 years’ time. You don’t want to totally upend the system and make universities different in 2027 to what they might be in 2026. But I would hope if we’re sitting here in 10 years’ time that the system doesn’t look as homogenous then as it does now.
One of the key things that came out of the Accord, and if Glyn Davis was here he would make this point as he makes quite often, is there’s an opportunity here for different universities to do different things, to have large universities and then potentially to have more boutique institutions as well. And there is an opportunity in the design of compacts to do a bit of that. Often people will tell me – I’m going to give you an example, languages – we don’t have enough people studying languages full stop.
HARE: No, universities are shutting down language schools.
CLARE: Correct, and it’s sort of spread thinly cross universities. So it’s open to the team at the ATEC to try and get those universities together and say “why don’t we make one university the home for one language” so that you can better coordinate that and make sure that you’ve got the system working in a more coordinated way.
HARE: Okay. But as Glyn Davis pointed out in his little 2017 book – what was it called – The Idea of Australian University, he talks about the policy structure basically making universes – universities more homogenous, and that has continued to be the case. And I think it’s even escalating at the moment. So obviously to allow that sort of differentiation that you’re talking about we need some fairly significant incentive changes and policy changes.
CLARE: I’m not suggesting that that’s going to happen overnight. If you’re looking for instant change, that will not happen. But over time if the system is going to continue to grow, go to that sort of provocative question about peak university – we probably all agree that there’ll be more students at university in the years ahead than there are now – so that that does provide us with an opportunity to think about what the system looks like over the next 10 years and doesn’t necessarily need to be as cookie cutter as it is today.
HARE: Okay. There’s a really good question here on Slido, “Would you agree that Job Ready Graduates undermines our equity goals?” So we do know that 42 per cent, I think, or 41 per cent of all university students are enrolled in cluster 1, which is I think next year they will be paying 17,000 – is it 400 or 200 and the government will be contributing 1,200. And a majority of disadvantaged students are also in cluster 1. So can you just talk to about how Job Ready Graduates is intersecting with equity at the moment and actually giving poor students huge debts?
CLARE: I’m on the record a million times about wanting to boost the number of equity students at university, and what’s that some of the reforms I discussed today, the demand-driven system and needs-based funding are all about. I’ve been pretty blunt about Job Ready Graduates. If the intention was to reduce the number of people doing arts degrees then it’s an abject failure because there are more people doing arts degrees than there were when it was introduced. And there’s a good logical reason for that – people choose the courses that they’re passionate about.
HARE: Well, we hope they do.
CLARE: More often than not. We have just implemented some pretty significant reforms when it comes to the HECS system or the HELP system, not just the cut to debt but the structure and the way in which people repay debt. And that was something that was recommended by the Accord as well as by Professor Bruce Chapman who designed the original HECS system. And on JRG the Prime Minister has made the point that we’re taking reform one step at a time. Whether it’s the structure of universities or whether it’s fixing JRG, reform is a bit like eating an elephant – one bite at a time.
HARE: Okay. I think there was a lot of expectation when Labor was first elected about JRG would be one of the first things to be dealt with but the can got kicked down the road to [indistinct]. We’re now four years in —
CLARE: Don’t misunderstand anything that I’ve said about this over the last few years. I’ve never ruled out reform here. It’s all about what you do first.
It is a significant change that will need to be made with significant dollars attached to it. And the Accord recommended that we fix JRG, but it also recommended a whole bunch of other things. And we’ve implemented a lot of that but not all of that. As I said in my remarks, there’s more work to do.
HARE: Okay. So there are also a couple of questions here about research. If there are any criticisms about your role as Minister is that you tend to be quite silent on research. Research is obviously incredibly complicated. It’s spread across a lot of different portfolio areas. It’s obviously essential to the university mission. Can you just speak to me about research and where it fits in in terms of your view of the structure and the backbone of universities?
CLARE: It’s a fundamental mission of universities. It’s about teaching and research. I think Tim Ayres is going to be with us a little later today. Tim will be able to talk to you about the SERD review, which is another recommendation that came out of the Accord about looking at the research that Government funds not just across my portfolio but across Health and Defence and right across Government.
The former government made a significant additional investment in research through the Accelerator Program, and that is rolling out right now. I met with the board to look at their work that they’re doing just a couple of weeks ago. That’s significant. Tim and I both met with them to discuss the work that they’re doing. And we’re eagerly awaiting the recommendations that come out of that SERD review when it lands, I suspect later this year.
HARE: Okay. International students. There was a very unpopular attempt to cap student numbers, which was stopped in its tracks and then a quasi cap put in its place. From what I understand, universities have been allowed to over enrol this year and that caps might be the caps – because that’s what they are because they’re not legislated – might be policed more harshly next year. Just going through university annual reports for 2024, I notice every single university bar maybe one or two made a significant increase in revenues in international students throughout the year, and I realise there’s the whole pipeline effect. But at the same time there was a lot of very loud complaining about ending MD 107. And government interference in trying to slow down or basically bring back the number of commencing international students. Is the government still – I realise Julian’s here and we will talk about this later, but do you think that sometimes universities protest too much?
CLARE: I don’t make any apologies for wanting to set up a managed system here. And I’ve said to you – and you’ve reported it – that I believe the first and most important responsibility of universities is to educate Australian students. And I don’t resile from that. But I’ve also been consistent in saying that international education is important. It doesn’t just make universities money; it makes an important financial contribution to the country. Even more importantly, it makes us friends because when students come here to study and they fall in love with Australia they take that love and affection for us back home. That is a diplomatic super power.
International education is also not just a one-way street. There’s an opportunity for universities to spread their wings and set up campuses or to educate people in country as well. And Julian and I will be heading off to India, perhaps with some people in this room, for the regular annual bilateral with India. When Dharmendra Pradhan came to Australia about three years ago and we were at the ANU, and he put out a challenge to universities to set up campuses in India I thought maybe one or two would take up the challenge. It’s a lot bigger than that.
So I want to thank the universities that have taken up this challenge. It’s not just campuses. I see Alec here from RMIT; the twinning degrees that you’re doing with BITS Pilani are a classic example of what we need to do more of.
What we sought to do last year and what we have done is reset the system so that universities know that we will manage the number of students that they have. We will keep that 270 number this year. It isn’t a hard cap in the sense that once you hit the number then it stops. But Ministerial Direction 111 gives Julian and the team the ability to fast track people to 80 per cent and then it runs in the normal pattern after that. So some universities are above it; some are below it. Universities by and large I think are at it or just above. VET is a bit down, which is why we’re going to hit 270. We’ve announced an extra 25,000 spots for next year. That’s proof of what I said last year that we will build growth into the system in a managed way. Julian will be consulting with the sector about the allocation of that, seeking to prioritise South East Asia in the allocations next year. And then the ATEC team will be able to, in the compacts that they design with each university, help to make sure that universities meet but don’t exceed those numbers in 2027.
HARE: Okay. Sadly, we’re out of time. But thank you very much, and we’ll see you next year.
CLARE: Thank you.
HARE: Thank you very much.