News & Views item - February 2006

 

 

Universities Entwined in Growing Red Tape Hope Their New Minister Will Listen and then Undertake to Obtain Cabinet Agreement to Administer a Cure. (February 13, 2006)

Minister Bishop on receiving her commission 

    Julie Bishop was sworn in as Minister for Education, Science and Training on January 27. For the ensuing 17 days she has been virtually silent in public. In fact her department has released only one inconsequential media statement so far.

 

Now Australia's university vice-chancellors are publicly raising the issue of what seems to be an ever extending length of red tape in which they're becoming ensnared.

 

Australian National University vice-chancellor Ian Chubb told The Australian red tape and regulation had continued to grow.  "All sorts of approvals have to be gained for courses that shouldn't be required. We have to predict basically 12 months in advance the subjects students will enrol in. Given a third haven't finished school when we make those predictions, it is unnecessarily complicated."

 

The outspoken University of Western Sydney vice-chancellor, Janice Reid, said compliance costs now amount to millions of dollars every year. "The explosion in fine-grained information demands by government and the ever more prescriptive policy environment is limiting our ability to be innovative and responsive to students. It means directing resources to huge compliance and reporting exercises and away from teaching research. It would be costing millions of dollars across the sector."

 

Geoff Maslen in the Australian Financial Review reports Australia's vice-chancellors have put government over regulation high on the agenda for their first meeting this month with the new federal Education Minister Julie Bishop.

 

Maslen goes on to say they will put before Ms Bishop the results of a study commissioned to identify the main areas where regulation has increased and according to Australian Vice-Chancellors' Committee (AVCC) chief executive John Mullarvey, "[W]ill be suggesting ways to pull back on regulation without undermining government programs."

 

The University of South Australia's Vice-Chancellor, Denise Bradley told Maslen  not only does the government require reports on areas where federal grants are applied but also on matters where the commonwealth has not supplied any of the funds, "[UniSA has] serious concerns about reporting which either seeks to shape how we manage the fine detail of our affairs or which constrains student choice."

 

Professor Peter Coaldrake

None of the vice-chancellors suggests that they and their universities don't have proper obligations of accountability to federal and state governments but as the just retired vice-chancellor of Macquarie University Di Yerbury who steps down as AVCC president this month points out, even before former education minister Brendan Nelson came on the scene four years ago, universities were more regulated, more scrutinised and subject to more onerous reporting requirements than most other organisations.

And she notes that, despite Nelson's claim he wanted to reduce red tape, his reforms actually increased the intrusion and associated costs considerably.

 

Queensland University of Technology vice-chancellor Peter Coaldrake told Maslen, "There is a tendency for accountability to be used as a lever for opening up and influencing the workings of universities, and even more so when coupled with demands for audit to allow ministers to 'reassure' the public that only quality work is being supported.

 

"My preference would be for government to focus more on the broad framework for higher education - questions of participation, access and ensuring broad social needs are being addressed - and less on attempts to engineer the composition and operations of the providers."