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Australian universities enrol more than 1.4 million students per year and employ more than 130,000 staff. They receive substantial public funding – about A$22 billion each year. They have also demonstrated substantial governance failings – or problems with the way they are run. As Education Minister Jason Clare has noted: If you don’t think there are challenges in university governance, you’ve been living under a rock. Two recent reports aim to tackle the problems with university governance. What did they find? And will this fix the issues? What’s wrong with university governance? One review is an interim report from a Labor-chaired Senate inquiry into university governance, handed down last month. The other is a federal government-comissioned “expert council” report, chaired by Melinda Cilento, who is also head of the Committee for Economic Development of Australia. This was released on Saturday. Both reports highlight serious concerns with the way Australian universities are run. The issues include: widespread underpayment of staff poor student experiences in some universities allegations of staff being bullied a lack of transparency around university decision-making excessive use of consultants concerns about excessive salaries for vice-chancellors. Both reports also identify a gap between universities’ perceptions of the quality of their governance and the experiences described by staff and students. How can university governance be improved? While the two reports identify similar problems, they differ in their approach to reform. The Senate report makes a series of recommendations it believes should be compulsory for all universities. These include publicly disclosing details of spending on consultants, having a minimum proportion of members with public administration and higher education expertise on governing bodies, and requiring meaningful consultation with staff and students around major changes. In contrast, the expert council proposes a series of principles universities should adopt. If they don’t, they need to explain why. Essentially, this makes them voluntary. The principles include that the governing body of a university should: have an effective, transparent process for appointing the vice-chancellor undertake appropriate checks before appointing a vice-chancellor or senior manager have a written policy on conflicts of interest ensure there are policies for important risks to be appropriately managed and regulatory obligations to be met. The university should also: operate lawfully, ethically and in a manner that’s consistent with its public purpose structure its workforce and pay fairly and responsibly. Will voluntary principles be effective? At the weekend, Clare announced the government will require universities to report on their compliance with the principles every year. They will report to the tertiary education regulator on an “if not, why not” basis. But will this be enough? It is difficult to understand why at least some of the principles, such as those listed above, are not mandatory. As the expert council noted in its report, universities did not always engage adequately with its review process. […] many of the submissions received from universities failed to engage proactively and genuinely in addressing areas of weakness [or] in identifying scope for improvement in governance practices and outcomes. In a further development, the federal government will also ask the remuneration tribunal to help set a framework for vice-chancellors’ pay. In line with the Senate report, the government will require university councils to publish: outcomes of meetings and decisions taken consultancy spending, its purpose, value and justification vice-chancellors’ external roles annual remuneration reports in line with requirements for public companies information about the membership of university councils, including members with public and higher education sector experience. Disclosure of this type of information can better inform stakeholders’ understanding of universities. It can also improve university decision-making by subjecting decisions to greater scrutiny. But we also need to see an improved culture within universities. This means the views of staff, students and other key stakeholders are welcomed and valued, and transparency and accountability are viewed as priorities. This is important for rebuilding trust. As the expert council observed, it is hard not to conclude that a lack of transparency and openness has played a key role in the observed erosion of trust within and towards universities.
