Christopher Pyne Talks the Talks -- What Next. (September 25, 2013)

Three articles in today's Australian feature feature the coalition Minister for Education, Christopher Pyne.

1. "Pyne vows to fix uni system -- John Ross - Exclusive
    

2. It's quality not quantity for Pyne -- John Ross - Exclusive
    

3. Research sits with uni portfolio.

In the first article John Ross reports that Mr Pyne "said his priorities were to 'repair' international education, reduce red tape and review the demand-driven system.

The minister went on to say: ""I want to review the way the previous government dealt with post-study work rights and streamlining of visas. They used a sledgehammer to break a walnut when they first came to power, and did a great deal of damage to our international education reputation by shutting down the capacity of international students to remain here post-study. Bad decisions were made around streamlining and post-study work rights, not because of a lack of recognition that they needed to be fixed but because they didn't want to interfere with their political arguments around 457 visas. I want to try and repair that."

And in explanation: ""International education runs on a six-monthly basis because it works around semesters. The more we can do on that by the end of the year, then in the second half of 2014 I think we'll be able to see an improvement."

As regards  the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency: "[A] good initiative, but it's gone from being a risk-based assessment of higher education institutions into a one-size-fits-all approach. This is stifling creativity in the higher education system. There's much we can do to reduce the burden of regulation, red tape and reporting by addressing some of the issues around TEQSA. We can get on with that reasonably quickly." And he referred to the report tabled this past August 5 by former University of Melbourne vice-chancellor Kwong Lee Dow and Australian National University regulation expert Valerie Braithwaite, Assuring quality while reducing the higher education regulatory burden.

Mr Pyne also made what might be valued as a "motherhood" statement: "You should never take your eye off quality in the higher education sector... quality is the key driver of reputation... If people are dropping off Australian universities because of quality, then we know we have a problem. I don't think we're at that point, but we want to make sure we don't get there."