When former University of South Australia vice chancellor Denise Bradley in her landmark 2008 report recommended that Australian higher education move to a demand-driven system, she was equally clear that an independent national regulator was required to ensure that teaching quality did not suffer. Previously, higher education had been officially regulated by the country’s states and territories. However, government funding gave Canberra a de facto prerogative to police standards — which it did via the Australian Universities Quality Agency (AUQA).

Nevertheless, there was widespread concern over a lack of clarity and consistency in standards. Having accepted Prof. Bradley’s report, the Labor government passed legislation in 2011 establishing the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (Teqsa), replacing AUQA.

Teqsa’s remit, according to the government, is to “enhance the overall quality of the Australian higher education system” by accrediting and evaluating institutions and programmes, encouraging best practices, and simplifying and harmonising regulatory arrangements.

Unlike the AUQA or the UK’s Quality Assurance Agency, Teqsa assesses each institution not against its own stated standards but against a universal set of more than 100 common “threshold standards”, which relate to both institutions and courses. Teqsa also directly accredits the courses of institutions that lack their own authority to accredit. In the agency’s first annual report, published on October 30, Teqsa’s chief commissioner, Carol Nicoll, said “in time” the agency would also begin to explore “the relative quality of higher education being delivered over and above minimum requirements”.

The threshold standards are largely based on existing “national protocols”, developed by AUQA in collaboration with the sector. Dr. Nicoll says Teqsa’s five commissioners have already developed a “shared understanding” of the standards framework and the regulatory principles by which the agency is to operate. She is confident the agency’s decision-making will be “consistent, fair and robust”.

But according to Vicki Thomson, executive director of the Australian Technology Network of universities, many in the sector feel the speed with which Teqsa has been established — regulatory powers were conferred in January — has exacerbated the inevitable teething problems which arise when a new body is created. Thomson is concerned about Teqsa’s interpretation of some threshold standards, and says “evidence is mounting” that its thirst for information is creating an unreasonable and, in some cases, “unsustainable” administrative burden for universities, which is draining “resources that should be directed to supporting teaching and research, with little in the way of offsetting gains in quality for students and the community”.

However, Teqsa’s communications manager, Tony Mithen, says the agency has already “significantly reduced” the burden of applying for registration and accreditation of courses. He says a further lightening of the load is likely as Teqsa, and its relationship with the sector, “matures”.

(Excerpted and adapted from Times Higher Education)