Tag: offices

  • The National Audit Office’s review of UKRI has lessons for the government

    The National Audit Office’s review of UKRI has lessons for the government

    It should come as little surprise – given the scale and complexity of the challenge – that the government sees investing in research and innovation (R&I), and the accompanying promise of new technologies and ideas, as key to achieving its complex policy goals of growing the economy, transitioning to clean power, and modernising the NHS.

    After all, history shows that state backing of R&I to overcome a range of problems – particularly in times of crisis – is hardly a novel idea. If the rapid technological advances witnessed in the 1940s to support the war effort are receding further into the past, then memories of the mass Covid-19 vaccine rollout at least remain fresh.

    With this in mind, the government’s commitment “to promote innovation and harness the full potential of the UK’s science base” through “protecting record funding for research and development” is merely the latest example of those in power acknowledging the vast capacity of R&I to transform society.

    This tradition at least partly explains the strong international reputation the UK has accumulated over the years in the field of R&I, with UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) – the country’s largest single public funder of R&I – at the forefront.

    In 2023–24, UKRI assessed 28,866 applications for competitive grant funding, ultimately spending £6 billion on R&I grants. Its recently approved projects have included funding for very early-stage research in microbial fuel cells and hydrogen purification, and the development of bone stem cell and biomaterial technology to reduce infection rates and the cost of hip repairs.

    In short, UKRI plays a critical role in the country’s R&I ecosystem, supporting cutting-edge work that feeds not only into the government’s environmental and health policy ambitions, but in other areas too.

    And by looking at the effectiveness of UKRI’s grant support, the National Audit Office (NAO) has identified some lessons for government that can serve a very useful, and much broader, purpose when it comes to tackling the major challenges facing the country.

    Lessons learned

    First is the importance of taking a planned and coordinated approach to R&I, which involves using good quality information on funding and knowing how to build a base to innovate in each research area. Government departments should be aware of other organisations with related objectives, determine whether they are also putting funds or resources into trying to innovate in that area, and identify potential linkages with their own workstreams.

    This “portfolio” approach to innovation is a key component in well-managed risk taking, which brings us to our second lesson: the need to establish a clear and effective risk appetite, and put in place the organisational cultures and processes that can support bold decision-making. Innovation – the act or process of doing something that has not been done before – goes hand-in-hand with risk. Embracing it requires the knowledge and the confidence in accepting that things may not turn out quite as intended, or may even fail together.

    The head of the NAO said as much in his recent address in Parliament, where he called on the government to unlock the vast opportunities for boosting productivity and strengthening resilience in the public sector by adopting a fast-learning approach when investing in innovation: in other words, learning quickly what works and what does not, so that failed projects can be promptly scrapped in favour of redirecting energy and resources to more promising ideas.

    Ultimately, a coherent, comprehensive and clearly communicated risk appetite can help organisations reap substantial rewards, more than offsetting the disappointment of unsuccessful ventures.

    Third is the caveat that while a clear plan, coordination and risk appetite can lead to successes, the full benefits of innovation cannot be realised without effective monitoring and evaluation. As well as evaluating programmes on a macro level, organisations should regularly draw together learning by theme (such as in a specific research area), with the support of strong data systems. Doing so can ensure that they effectively capture cumulative learning and develop a well-rounded understanding of which innovations are working well, which ones are not, and why.

    Across the whole of government

    Arguably the most important lesson of all, however, is remembering that these insights cut across the whole of government and need not be strictly applied to the domain of R&I. The projects funded by UKRI may be operating on the frontier of scientific and technological research, but this does not mean that what we learn about their approaches to innovation cannot be applied to other government contexts.

    If government is to achieve its long-term policy goals, it must do more to identify the public spaces where innovation is lacking, and take measures to reverse this trend. This includes breaking down the barriers that are preventing some organisations from adopting the right culture to allow innovation to flourish. It would do well to start with taking on board some of the lessons learned from UKRI’s approach.

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  • Do we really empower sabbatical offices to be the voice of students?

    Do we really empower sabbatical offices to be the voice of students?

    by Rebecca Turner, Jennie Winter & Nadine Schaefer

    Student voice is firmly embedded within the architecture of universities, with multiple mechanisms existing through which we (as educators) can ‘hear’, and students can ‘leverage’ their voice.  The notion of student voice is widely debated (and critiqued – see Mendes & Hammett, 2023), and whilst relevant to this blog post, it is not what we seek to focus on here. Rather we focus on one of the primary figureheads of student voice within universities – the sabbatical officer – and consider how they are empowered to represent the ‘voice’ of their peers to their university.

    Sabbatical officers are elected by the student body to represent their interests to the wider university community. They are leaders and trustees of their student union – semi autonomous organisations that operate alongside universities to advocate for the student body (Brooks, Byford & Sela 2016).  As elected student representatives, sabbatical officers sit on high-level university committees where student voice is ‘required,’ making the rapid transition from a student in a lecture hall, to a voice for all. Though this is an anticipated move, it is potentially challenging. Becoming a sabbatical officer is the accumulation of a hard-fought election campaign, which commonly builds on several years of working with their students’ union alongside their undergraduate studies (Turner & Winter, 2023).

    In collaboration with the NUS, and with the support of a small grant from the Staff and Educational Development Association (SEDA), we undertook a national survey to develop contemporary insights into the work of elected sabbatical officers. Sabbatical officers were clearly keen to share their experiences as we achieved responses from 59% of student unions affiliated to the NUS. We also undertook interviews with a sample of sabbatical officers (n=4) and permanent student union staff (n=6) who supported them during their time in office. Here we reflect on headlines emerging from this study, to place a brief spotlight on the work of sabbatical officers. 

    What a busy year (or two!)

    Sabbatical officers were often negotiating multiple, potentially competing, demands – as this survey respondent reflected when invited to comment on the main challenges they faced:

    ‘Getting up to speed with the fast-moving world of [being] a sabbatical officer and the many roles I had (sabb, trustee, leader, admin and campaigner)’.

    Sabbatical officers had a long list of responsibilities, including jobs inherited from their predecessor, union and university commitments, as well as the commitments they made through their own manifestos.  Attending university committees to give the student voice took considerable time, with many questioning the value of the time spent in meetings:

    ‘It’s very much the case that you are in a room for two hours where you will be speaking for, I don’t know, two minutes. So sometimes it seems very boring to get involved with those random conversations which have very little to do directly with student experience.’ SO1

    It was a common theme that sabbatical officers were silent during these meetings, waiting for the brief interlude when they were invited to speak. Leading us to question both where their agency as student representatives lay in these committees, and how they could effect change in this space, when their engagement was limited. A concern shared across survey respondents, for example:

    ‘I’m in a huge number of meetings which significantly reduces the amount of time I have to work on manifesto objectives.’

    With a jobs list (and a diary) that echoed that of many Vice Chancellors (though with considerably less experience in HE), sabbatical officers reported engaging in trade-offs for who they worked with, whose voice was heard and opinions sought, to balance the demands of their role.  As this sabbatical officer reflected, this could leave the wider student body questioning their actions:

    ‘[Students] want to see the battle happening.  What they don’t want to see, is me sit for three hours and hash out the middle ground with some members of staff who probably aren’t going to change their mind.’ SO2

    Finding their voice

    Though given a seat at high level tables, respondents did not always feel at ease speaking up, the sentiments of this respondent were repeated many times in our data:

    ‘I think the hardest part is, we are sitting on committees with individuals who have worked here for years.  We’re never going to have that same knowledge, so that makes it quite a challenge um to be able to understand the ins and outs of the university and the institution, and the politics.’ SO3

    We did question whether the expectation to engage in these spaces may further reinforce the inequalities in student leadership highlighted by Brooks et al (2015).  However, sabbatical officers were not working alone. Permanent officers played an important role, helping them, for example, to decode paperwork and plan their contributions. Leadership allies, who may, for example, provide early access to meeting paperwork to aide preparation, or coach sabbatical officers in advance of meetings, assisted sabbatical officers to find their voice:

    ‘I think the university has been really accommodating giving me the heads up on things that I could then have a bit more time to read up on things and to improve my knowledge.’ SO4

    Developing effective support networks was essential; through these networks they gained the knowledge needed to contribute confidently in ‘university’ spaces. However, this took considerable time and resulted in many reprioritising their work. They focused on activities deemed essential (which were many!) with other areas of the work being streamlined to ensure promised commitments could be fulfilled (Turner & Winter, 2023). 

    The time taken for sabbatical officers to get up to speed was discussed at length by those serving a second term, which as this respondent noted, was ‘when the real work got done.’   They had learnt the ropes, and as another Sabbatical Officer (SO) reflected:

    ‘There’s a lot of stuff [to learn] when you come into this role.  I think sabbatical officers do well if they are re-elected because they’ve had to learn a lot.’ SO2

    ‘Knowing the route to achieve my goals’

    Our data captured the committed and driven nature of this (overlooked and overworked) constituent of the HE community. Though working in challenging circumstances, they embraced opportunities to influence policy and practice. Successes were based on the support they received and the strategies they developed to undertake their work. The value of an effective handover from their predecessor cannot be overlooked and permanent student union staff provided much needed continuity and support. Sabbatical officers drew on their student representatives to provide the eyes on the ground and engaged with senior leaders to develop their understanding of how universities work and through these individuals they grew in confidence to speak in front of diverse audiences.  As individuals, many respondents performed their roles with tenacity, approaching their work both pragmatically and innovatively. Yet the time limited nature of this role added pressure and delineated what could be achieved:

    ‘Knowing the route to achieve my goals was difficult because it requires knowing what exactly you want before you’ve even started the job [so that you can] achieve what you want in year.’

    This prompted us to question the sustainability of the sabbatical officer role; realistically who can manage, at this early stage in their career, the breadth of demands placed on them for more than a short period of time?

    Promoting the voice of sabbatical officers?

    As pedagogic researchers, we have a final, curious observation to make regarding the dearth of systematic research into this field of HE. Student unions have a long history; reference is still made to the activism and uprise of the 1960s (Klemenčič 2014). As a community we lament how student voice activities have become the realm of quality assurance, and question whether students have become politically apathetic (Raaper, 2020). The re-positioning of student unions has increased accountability and encouraged partnership working with their affiliated university (Brooks et al, 2016; Squire 2020). This leads us to question how relevant it is to continue to look backwards and talk of how students’ unions used to operate in the past. As the sector becomes increasingly diverse and how students engage with HE becomes more fragmented, we need to play closer attention to students’ unions to ensure they are supported to function effectively and represent the interest of students. 

    Dr Rebecca Turner is an Associate Professor in Educational Development at the University of Plymouth, UK.  Alongside her interest in student voice and representation, Rebecca’s research addresses themes relating to inclusivity, student success and widening participation. 

    Professor Jennie Winter is Dean of Teaching and Learning and Professor of Academic Development at Plymouth Marjon University, a National Teaching Fellow, and a Principal Fellow of the UK Higher Education Academy. She holds numerous external roles, contributes to international pedagogic research, and her work has been utilised by the European Commission and presented globally.

    Dr Nadine Schaefer is an Educational Developer at the University of Plymouth. Her research interests include student voice, student engagement and wider quality assurance issues in HE. Nadine is a Senior Advance HE Fellow (SFHEA).

    Author: SRHE News Blog

    An international learned society, concerned with supporting research and researchers into Higher Education

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  • Admissions Offices Brace for Federal Scrutiny

    Admissions Offices Brace for Federal Scrutiny

    Last month the government cut $400 million in federal funding for Columbia University and sent a list of demands the university would have to meet to get it back. Among them: “deliver a plan for comprehensive admission reform.”

    The administration sent a similar letter earlier this month to Harvard University after freezing $9 billion in funding, demanding that the university “adopt and implement merit-based admissions policies” and “cease all preferences based on race, color, ethnicity or national origin in admissions.”

    And in March the Department of Justice launched investigations into admissions practices at Stanford University and three University of California campuses, accusing them of defying the Supreme Court’s decision banning affirmative action in June 2023’s Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard.

    Exactly what the Trump administration believes is going on behind closed doors in highly selective college admissions offices remains unclear. The University of California system has been prohibited from considering race in admissions since the state outlawed the practice in 1996, and both Harvard and Columbia have publicly documented changes to their admissions policies post-SFFA, including barring admissions officers from accessing the applicant pool’s demographic data.

    Regardless, given the DOJ investigations and demands of Columbia and Harvard—not to mention potential demands at newly targeted institutions like Princeton, Northwestern and Brown—the federal government appears set to launch a crusade against admissions offices.

    A spokesperson for the Education Department did not respond to multiple questions from Inside Higher Ed, including a request to clarify what “comprehensive admission reform” means and what evidence the administration has that admissions decisions at Columbia and Harvard are not merit-based, or that they continue to consider race even after the SFFA ruling.

    Columbia acquiesced to many of the Trump administration’s demands, but it’s not clear if admissions reform is one of those concessions. When asked, a Columbia spokesperson said that “at this moment” the university had nothing to add beyond the university’s March 21 letter to the administration.

    In that letter, Columbia officials wrote that they would “review our admissions procedures to ensure they reflect best practices,” adding that they’d “established an advisory group to analyze recent trends in enrollment and report to the President” on “concerns over discrimination against a particular group.”

    Interestingly, Columbia officials also wrote that they would investigate “a recent downturn in both Jewish and African American enrollment.”

    A Harvard spokesperson told Inside Higher Ed that the university’s “admissions practices comply with all applicable laws,” but they declined to answer additional questions about potential changes to admission policies or whether they’d received clarification from the Trump administration.

    Angel Pérez, president of the National Association for College Admission Counseling, said the vague demands on college admissions offices are intentional, and that the administration is “setting institutions up for failure.”

    “Institutions are certainly going to defend their process, but it’s going to be chaotic and it’s going to be noisy … it’s almost like we are seeing SFFA play itself out all over again,” he said. “Is there the potential that it could change some things about the [admissions] process? Absolutely. We just don’t know what that would look like.”

    Orwell in the Reading Room

    If the Trump administration’s specific grievances with selective admissions are murky, then its plan to enforce “reform” is downright opaque. However, officials have offered some hints.

    In a December op-ed in The Washington Examiner, which outlined a plan that so far reflects the Trump administration’s higher education agenda with uncanny accuracy, American Enterprise Institute fellow Max Eden suggested “a never-ending compliance review” targeting Harvard and others to enforce the SFFA ruling. In his view, admissions officers should not discuss applicants or make decisions without a federal agent present to ensure they don’t even obliquely discuss race.

    “[They] should assign Office of [sic] Civil Rights employees to the Harvard admissions office and direct the university to hold no admissions meeting without their physical presence,” Eden wrote. “The Office of Civil Rights should be copied on every email correspondence, and Harvard should be forced to provide a written rationale for every admissions decision to ensure nondiscrimination.”

    Eden now works for the Trump administration, though it’s not clear in what capacity. Inside Higher Ed located a White House email address for him, but he did not respond to several interview requests in time for publication.

    Edward Blum, the president of Students for Fair Admissions and the architect of the affirmative action ban, told Inside Higher Ed he thinks rigorous federal oversight of admissions offices is sorely needed.

    “Requiring competitive colleges and universities to disclose in granular detail their admissions practices to various federal agencies is an important and wise decision,” he wrote in an email.

    Pérez said that level of intrusion on a college admissions office’s process would effectively destroy the profession.

    “If that were to happen, I can unequivocally tell you that we are not going to have people who want to do this work,” he said. “We know how critically important it is. But how many more headwinds can they face before they begin to ask themselves, is this really worth it?”

    Crusade in Search of a Problem

    Test-optional admissions policies are likely to become a magnet for federal scrutiny. In a February Dear Colleague letter instructing colleges to eliminate all race-conscious programming, the Education Department wrote that test-optional policies could be “proxies for race” to help colleges “give preference” to certain racial groups.

    Columbia is one of the few Ivy League institutions to retain the test-optional policy it put in place during the COVID-19 pandemic; Harvard reinstated testing requirements this past application cycle.

    Personal essays may also fall under the Trump administration’s microscope. Hard-line affirmative action critics have suggested that colleges may be effectively circumventing the Supreme Court’s ban by imputing an applicant’s race from their essays. Chief Justice John Roberts’s majority opinion said that practice should be tolerated as long as an applicant’s identity is considered in the context of their personal journey. But his vaguely self-contradictory language—he added a caveat that said essays should not be used as a “proxy” for racial consideration—has engendered fierce debate over the role of the essay in applicant reviews.

    Last month the University of Austin, an unaccredited new college in Texas with ideologically conservative roots, announced it would consider only standardized test scores when admitting applicants, disregarding essays, GPA and recommendation letters.

    “Admissions at elite colleges now come down to who you know, your identity group or how well you play the game,” a university official wrote in announcing the policy. “This system rewards manipulation, not merit.”

    Blum suspects many selective colleges of disregarding the affirmative action ban and said he was especially skeptical of those that reported higher or stable enrollments of racial minorities this fall, including Yale, Duke and Princeton. In an interview with Inside Higher Ed in February, he said he expects those institutions to invoke scrutiny from the courts and the Trump administration.

    But both Columbia and Harvard reported declines in underrepresented minority enrollment last fall, especially Black students. At Harvard, Black enrollment fell by 4 percentage points, from 18 percent for the Class of 2027 to 14 percent of the Class of 2028; at Columbia Black enrollment fell by 12 points, from 20 percent to 8 percent. (This paragraph has been updated to correct Harvard’s Black enrollment figures.)

    Pérez said that colleges that reported higher underrepresented minority enrollment have a simple explanation: demographic trends.

    “The truth is that the majority of students applying to institutions right now are incredibly diverse and will only get more diverse,” he said. “You’re putting colleges in an impossible position if you’re penalizing them for having a more diverse applicant pool.”

    Eric Staab, vice president of admissions and financial aid at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Ore., said his institution isn’t concerned about drawing the Trump administration’s ire, despite going test-blind this year and maintaining a stable level of racial diversity.

    For one, he said, he’s not sure the Office for Civil Rights will be staffed well enough to take on more than a handful of target institutions after the Education Department’s mass layoffs last month. Even if it is, Staab said he’s confident that post-SFFA, investigators wouldn’t find anything illegal or even objectionable at Lewis & Clark.

    “Admissions has always been a merit-based process … with the [SFFA decision], pretty much all of us needed to do some tweaking or major overhaul of our admissions and financial aid policies, and we did that,” he said. “I’m not worried about them sending people into reading sessions, because we have nothing to cover up.”

    But Pérez said there could be a broader chilling effect across admissions offices if the Trump administration pursues a more aggressive approach to its “admissions reform” agenda.

    “Institutions are asking questions of the DOJ and other departments to try to get clarity, but therein lies the challenge: They have not been given clarity, so they don’t know how to prepare,” he said. “That lack of clarity is causing chaos.”

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  • Feds Investigate Stanford, UC Campuses’ Admissions Offices

    Feds Investigate Stanford, UC Campuses’ Admissions Offices

    The Department of Justice launched investigations into admissions practices at four California universities on Thursday night, accusing them of flouting the Supreme Court’s ruling banning affirmative action in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 

    The “compliance reviews,” as the department called them, will target Stanford University and three University of California campuses: Berkeley, Los Angeles and Irvine.

    In a statement announcing the investigations, the Justice Department wrote that the investigations are “just the beginning” of their efforts to “eliminate DEI” in college admissions.

    “President Trump and I are dedicated to ending illegal discrimination and restoring merit-based opportunity across the country,” U.S. attorney general Pam Bondi wrote in the statement.

    It’s unclear what prompted the investigations or what evidence the department has to support its suspicions of illegal racial preferences in admissions at the targeted institutions. Some affirmative action opponents have suggested that institutions that enrolled higher numbers of minority students last fall, the first class admitted after the Supreme Court decision, may have done so illegally.

    Berkeley, UCLA and Irvine all reported upticks in the number of Black and Hispanic students enrolled in the Class of 2028 last fall: 45 percent of students who enrolled at a UC system campus this fall were underrepresented students of color, a 1.2 percent increase from 2023 and a record for the system.

    Just hours before the DOJ announced its probe, the Department of Health and Human Services launched its own investigation into admissions practices at UCLA’s medical school, accusing it of illegally considering applicants’ race.

    The UC system has been banned from considering race in admissions since 1996, when the state passed a referendum making the practice illegal at public institutions. That hasn’t stopped anti–affirmative action watchdogs from accusing the system of doing so secretly.

    Last month, the newly formed public interest group Students Against Racial Discrimination filed a lawsuit accusing the system of practicing affirmative action behind closed doors, citing increases in Black and Hispanic enrollment at its most selective campuses, namely UCLA and Berkeley, and labeling recent admissions policies—like the decision in 2020 not to consider standardized test scores—proxies for affirmative action.

    “Since Proposition 209 banned California’s public institutions from considering race in admissions, UC has implemented admissions practices to comply with it,” a UC spokesperson wrote in an email to Inside Higher Ed. “The UC undergraduate admissions application collects students’ race and ethnicity for statistical purposes only. This information is not shared with application reviewers and is not used for admissions.”

    Stanford, unlike the UC schools, reported a marked decline in first-year underrepresented students last year, according to the university’s Common Data Set, released last month. Black enrollment at the university fell by nearly 50 percent, and Hispanic enrollment by 14.4 percent; meanwhile, white and Asian enrollment rose by 14.5 percent and 10 percent, respectively.

    Luisa Rapport, Stanford’s director of media relations, said the university has not flouted the affirmative action ban, and that following the SFFA ruling, it “immediately engaged in a comprehensive and rigorous review to ensure compliance in our admissions processes.”

    “We continue to be committed to fulfilling our obligations under the law, and we will respond to the department’s questions as it conducts this process,” she wrote in an email to Inside Higher Ed.

    ‘Just the Beginning’

    Angel Pérez, president of the National Association for College Admission Counseling, said he’s heard “extraordinary concern” from admissions officers and deans in recent weeks that investigations could spread to their institutions. They don’t know how to prepare because “we have no idea what these compliance reviews even entail.”

    What they do know, he said, is that investigations could throw their offices into chaos during the height of admissions season.

    “These kinds of reviews are extremely disruptive. They’re also extremely expensive,” Pérez said. “There are some institutions that, you know, may not survive a compliance review given the legal costs.”

    In an interview with Inside Higher Ed last month, Edward Blum, president of SFFA and the architect of the nationwide affirmative action ban, said he expected schools that reported higher enrollment of racial minorities in the fall to invoke legal scrutiny, both from the courts and the Trump administration. He said he believed a number of institutions could be “cheating” the SFFA ruling, including some that were not included in this first round of investigations: Yale, Duke and Princeton.

    “So many of us are befuddled and concerned that in the first admissions cycle post-SFFA, schools that said getting rid of affirmative action would cause their minority admissions to plummet didn’t see that happen,” he said.

    Some colleges are withholding demographic information about their incoming classes altogether. On Thursday, hours after the Justice Department probes were launched, Harvard admitted its Class of 2029 but did not release any information—including demographics, acceptance and yield rates, and geographic data—for the first time in more than 70 years.

    In response to multiple questions from Inside Higher Ed about what the compliance reviews would entail or how the department plans to pursue its investigations into admissions offices, a Justice Department spokesperson referred to the initial statement announcing the investigations.

    “No further comment,” he wrote via email.

    There are some hints, though, as to what form a federal admissions investigation could take. In a December op-ed in The Washington Examiner outlining a plan that has reflected the Trump administration’s higher education agenda so far with uncanny accuracy, American Enterprise Institute fellow Max Eden suggested Bondi initiate “a never-ending compliance review” targeting Harvard University and others to enforce the SFFA ruling.

    “She should assign Office of Civil Rights employees to the Harvard admissions office and direct the university to hold no admissions meeting without their physical presence,” Eden wrote. “The Office of Civil Rights should be copied on every email correspondence, and Harvard should be forced to provide a written rationale for every admissions decision to ensure nondiscrimination.”

    For the four universities at the center of the investigations, this disruption could be especially pronounced right now, as colleges begin sending out acceptance letters and enter the busiest season for building their incoming classes.

    “This could not come at a worse time. It is April; this is enrollment management season,” Pérez said. “For institutions to take the time, energy and resources to [respond to compliance reviews] means that they’re going to have a harder time enrolling their classes.”

    ‘Absurd’ Accusations

    The Department of Justice is alleging that in the year and a half since the SFFA ruling, colleges have skirted the law by continuing to consider race in the admissions process. Those grounds make its targets particularly confusing, given that the University of California system hasn’t used affirmative action in admissions for nearly three decades.

    In 1996, California voters passed Proposition 209, banning the practice at public colleges. In the application cycles immediately after, Black and Hispanic enrollment fell precipitously. Pérez said it took many years of experimenting with race-neutral admissions, financial aid and recruitment policies for UC campuses to bring Black and Hispanic enrollment back to their prior rates.

    In the months following the SFFA decision, Pérez said college admissions professionals turned to California for lessons in how to maintain diversity without running afoul of the new law.

    “Officials and admission professionals [at UC] have been helping other institutions across the United States comply with the Supreme Court decision,” he said. “They have actually served as leaders in this space. To accuse them of violating any law is absurd.”

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  • “Unis are not Centrelink offices”: Coalition’s pitch to university leaders

    “Unis are not Centrelink offices”: Coalition’s pitch to university leaders

    The Coalition would scrap Australian Tertiary Education Commission (ATEC) and have an independent tribunal decide vice-chancellor pay, opposition education spokeswoman Senator Sarah Henderson told universities on Wednesday.

    Reinstating the 50 per cent pass rate rule and significantly capping overseas students to inner-city Sydney and Melbourne unis are also top of the list.

    The senator outlined her party’s priorities for the first time at the Universities Australia Solutions Summit, a meeting of university leaders, which also facilitated discussion within the sector about current issues.

    The Coalition is adamant that “Australian students must come first” in every decision universities make, but that direction would come from vice-chancellors and a regulator, not government policy, she said.

    “To put students first, universities must be governed by strong and principled leaders who run their institutions efficiently, transparently and with integrity,” she said.

    “Universities must be able to operate with certainty and plan for the long term, free from day-to-day government intervention and policy chaos; overseen by a tough and feared regulator, which enforces the highest standards when required.”

    An LNP government will cancel the establishment of ATEC, and instead the Tertiary Education Quality Standards Agency (TEQSA) would be the responsible regulator.

    “This is another layer of education bureaucracy and a significant cost which will not take our universities forward. It certainly does not add value to students,” she said.

    Senator Henderson said things like scholarships and student support funds, which ATEC has been tasked with reviewing, is work for government and ministers.

    “The ATEC tells us this government doesn’t know what to do. There’s no proper understanding of its role, no legislation. And yet it is set to commence in three months time,” she said.

    “The hard work you would expect a government to undertake is being sent to the Commission.“

    Her party would assess changes to funds such as the Higher Education Partnerships and Participation Program and the Indigenous Students Support Fund by asking the following questions: “Do they support quality of teaching and learning? Labour market needs? Equity access so all Australians can aspire to university education? Student completion rates and employment outcomes?”

    The LNP previously announced it would increase the number of Commonwealth-supported places for medial students by 100 in 2026 and 2027, and by 150 from 2028, an Accord-recommended policy.

    The party has not changed its position on Job-Ready Graduates, she said, but it will review the funding arrangement.

    Although the senator welcomed the Universities Accord final report’s recommendations, she said the Albanese government has unfairly placed the burden of reform onto individuals and universities.

    She said Education Minister Jason Clare has “outsourced much of the heavy lifting” to Accord chair Professor Mary O’Kane and her panel.

    She also said universities should not bear the burden of means-testing students, in other words, evaluating whether a student is eligible for government support regarding the Commonwealth prac payment.

    “Consider, for instance, the prac payments: discretionary grant programs where you are being asked to means-test students. Universities are not Centrelink offices,” she said.

    “We understand that universities are big and complex organizations, but they have not enjoyed a strong track record always in supporting students. Too many times students have been left high and dry.”

    She also said TEQSA has not done enough to protect women from sexual violence on campus or Jewish students and staff from anti-Semitism.

    “A Dutton government would adopt zero-tolerance of anti-Semitism on university campuses. We will not wait for universities to act in their own time,” she said.

    The senator told universities they need to do more to stop anti-Semitism on campuses. Picture: UA

    “We expect all universities to fully cooperate with the new dedicated anti-Semitism Task Force, led by the Australian Federal Police and other agencies.”

    All Australian vice-chancellors agreed on a definition of anti-Semitism on Wednesday. While the senator said she appreciated the vice-chancellors agreement, the Coalition would require unis to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition, which is a more robust framework and definition, she said.

    The Coalition would implement a national higher education code to prevent and respond to anti-Semitism and establish a judicial inquiry into anti-Semitism at Australian universities, she announced.

    “We will leave no stone unturned, including amending the Fair Work Act if necessary.”

    Another LNP priority is to reinstate the 50 per cent pass rate rule, she said.

    “We don’t believe there are enough safeguards to protect struggling students from leaving university with no qualification and a large student debt,” she said.

    The Accord final report recommended removing the rule as a “priority action”. The rule says students who failed over half of their studies weren’t eligible for a HECS-HELP loan and had to pay upfront.

    Theoretically, the rule was supposed to protect young people from acquiring debt with no qualifications, aimed at students who are possibly ill-placed to be at university.

    Practically, the Accord panel found the rule disproportionately affected students from First Nations, low socioeconomic and other underrepresented or educationally disadvantaged backgrounds, who are more likely to fall behind in university due to external circumstances.

    The rule was removed and replaced with the ‘support for students policy‘ in July 2023.

    Later on Wednesday in his National Press Club address, UA chief executive Luke Sheehy said bringing back the rule would be detrimental to students in equity cohorts, which the Accord and the Labor government have been trying to help become qualified for economic reasons.

    “It would be devastating. Our universities were very displeased and upset with the 50 per cent rule when it came in because it undermines the autonomy of our world class teachers and educators at our universities to support students in their own universities,” he said.

    “I always worry about mandated policies from one central point in Canberra, made without proper consultation. It’s such a blunt rule. And we will be asking again for the Coalition to reconsider that.”

    Vice-chancellor salaries would be set by the Remuneration Tribunal, not university boards, under a Dutton government.

    “In this cost-of-living crisis, the current situation, frankly, does not meet the pub test,” she told the audience.

    The senator would also back an “Australian universities performance index”, a website accessible to the public that provides measurements of an institution’s completion rates, student satisfaction, course quality and cost.

    “As a parent, I can attest to the complexity of navigating the university system for school leavers or those seeking to reskill or upgrade their qualifications,” she said.

    “Just working out to which course to apply [for] is a challenge. So rather than judge universities on the research dollars they generate, which drives international students and global rankings, let’s focus on home-grown performance.

    Related stories: Universities Australia’s pitch to governments | Mary O’Kane to lead ATEC from July | Ombudsman: What universities can start doing now to support students

    “This reform will drive up competition, lift teaching standards and ensure students make informed choices about their education.”

    While both major parties plan to bring down the number of international students studying in Australia, the Coalition’s cap would be harsher than a Labor government’s, and would focus on getting overseas students out of cities, where two-thirds of them reside, and into the regions.

    She echoed a speech delivered by veteran businesswoman and University of Technology Sydney chancellor Catherine Livingstone on Tuesday: universities haven’t been listening to community concerns about the “perceived impact of immigration on housing availability and affordability.’’

    “We persist with offering opaque and inflated claims about [universities’] direct impact,” Senator Henderson said.

    “[The current number of international students] is not good for our country or for the education outcomes of Australian students. We need to get the balance right. Every country has a responsibility to run its migration program in the national interest.”

    She said more information about a Coalition overseas student policy will be announced in the next few weeks.

    The LNP is disheartened about the lack of commercialisation of research, the senator said, which will be “put back on the agenda,” fostering more collaboration between universities and industry to boost student experience and job-readiness.

    It will also reinstate ministerial discretion to all Australian Research Council grant programs, in contrast to the current government which has control of only some research grants,.

    By doing so, the government has “absolved itself of its responsibility to safeguard precious taxpayer funds in the interest of all Australians.”

    “Under our Westminster system of government, the buck stops with the government of the day, and not an unelected board,” she continued.

    “Universities matter. But universities that are run in the best interests of students really matter.

    “If I am given the honor of being the next Minister for Education, I look forward to working closely with you with certainty, not ambiguity, to share in this crucial mission.“

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