ATEC | Funding Conditions

Question

Senator KOVACIC: For the benefit of people who aren't here in the room and haven't seen these emails, the emails require universities to do three things: agree not to take overenrolments-and correct me if I'm wrong on any of this-report on support to staff and students during the transition period and agree to early adoption of governance standards. The leverage applied, in my view, is pretty stark. To do these things, universities were promised to share a $50 million overenrolment fund. It offered an attractive, let's call it, glide path to down the caps and presented with the implied-I won't call it a threat. I'll call it a implication that actions they take now will be considered by ATEC when allocating growth places through mission based compacts for 2027. I want to be clear as to whether you believe my understanding is correct. Also, I think that there is very clearly leverage being applied. It feels like pressure. If I were to read those letters, I'd feel like I better do this. I don't know how to articulate that in a different way. It feels like a lot of pressure to impose these outcomes, otherwise you may be impacted, and what I'm worried about is what the lawful basis to impose those governance conditions was at the time. Prof. Glover: Mr Turvey could answer on the programmatic side of it. I'm happy to make a comment. Mr Turvey: Sure. There's a $50 million fund of additional support on top of the existing maximum basic grant amount that universities are already entitled to receive. It was designed to assist with the transition to a new funding model to help address the issues around open enrolment that we described before. It's reasonably common for government programs to impose conditions upon receipt of funding. The reporting burden in this particular case is reasonably light. We've asked institutions to provide us with this information. They have, and we've used that as the basis for making recommendations to government. Senator KOVACIC: Was any legal advice obtained on the lawfulness of taking this approach? Mr Turvey: I would have to take that on notice, but the advice that I've been given is that the approach that we've taken is entirely consistent with the Higher Education Support Act. Senator KOVACIC: If you could do that and let me know where that advice came from, that would be great. Mr Turvey: I will.

Answer

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Documents

• Question with answer (PDF) (opens in a new tab)
• SQ26-000726.pdf (opens in a new tab)