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Tethers for TEQSA
Review suggests smaller role for national body and more coordination among regulators to cut through red tape. By Antonia Maiolo
A review has found the higher education sector’ s national regulatory body should have its functions reduced, amid concerns universities are overloaded with red tape. The independent report, Review of Higher Education Regulation, examined the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency’ s( TEQSA) role in the sector and how the burden of regulation could be reduced in higher education without compromising quality.
The review stated that TEQSA’ s legislation did not appear to be operating the way the government or the sector originally intended.
“ The regulatory principles of necessity, risk and proportionality embedded in [ The Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency Act 2011 ] were included to ensure that the focus of TEQSA’ s activities did not unnecessarily burden existing high-quality providers,” the report outlined.
But since TEQSA’ s establishment, universities have raised concerns of increased paperwork and duplication in meeting certain requirements. The report stated this might be because the agency emerged in an already crowded regulatory environment.
A spokesperson for minister for higher education Senator Kim Carr said different regulatory obligations have
4 | Issue 8 2013 resulted in duplication, incongruence and even conflicting requirements, placing unnecessary compliance strain on institutions.“ The report suggests it is time for all the regulators to step back and recognise their place in a broader regulatory ecosystem, and better coordinate their demands on universities,” the spokesperson said.
The review included a number of recommendations to address this, including: reducing TEQSA’ s functions to its core activities and cutting its number of commissioners; reducing duplication by better aligning the work of regulators; a ministerial direction to the TEQSA CEO regarding allocation of resources so courses can be accredited more quickly; and the speedy implementation of a single national higher education data collector. The report also recommended that universities receive greater autonomy and become“ primarily self-regulating”.
The National Tertiary Education Union( NTEU) shared the concerns of the report’ s authors, professors Kwong Lee Dow and Valerie Braithwaite, and said it was supportive of the bulk of their recommendations.
“ We agree with removing TEQSA’ s responsibilities for quality assurance, as well as requiring [ the agency ] to detail how it applies the principles of risk and proportionality to different types of higher education institutions, such as universities and small for-profit providers,” NTEU president Jeannie Rea said.
Professor Barney Glover, chair of Innovative Research Universities and vice-chancellor of Charles Darwin University, said the report made clear that the legislative framework had pushed TEQSA into difficult positions and that the relationships across various bodies must be improved.
Glover said the report’ s authors“ propose that TEQSA focus on the registration and course accreditation roles that are at the heart of its responsibility and explicitly work in partnership with other bodies and providers”. He explained that these actions would produce a regulatory system consistent with the initial plans for TEQSA.
University of Sydney vice-chancellor Dr Michael Spence also welcomed the report’ s conclusions.
“ We believe the regulatory red tape burden we face is stifling the international competitiveness of Australia’ s higher education sector,” Spence said.
He agreed that the recommendations in the report would help address these issues.“ We particularly welcome the strong recommendation that [ TEQSA’ s role ] be clarified and focused on provider registration and re-accreditation,” he said. n