Labor HE policy veteran Kim Carr says the government has an “ideological agenda to undermine a high-quality university system based on public provision”

Senator Carr was speaking in the Senate yesterday, opposing the government bill for full cost recovery of regulating universities and other HE providers by the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency.

“If you change TEQSA, you can change the higher education system. This government is clearly intent on changing that system,” he said.

The senator called on the Agency to “explicitly set out the reasons” for granting what was Avondale University College, university status. And he criticised the composition of the Higher Education Standards Panel, which sets the requirements TEQSA enforces.

“The membership of the standards panel now includes three representatives of private providers, a representative of the Australian Technology Network and a representative of the Regional Universities Network but no representative of Australia’s most research-intensive universities—the Group of Eight,” Senator Carr said.

He also warned the new TEQSA charges, “are being borne by the lowest-risk institutions, the large public universities.

“While the government remains on its present path, we are likely to lose significant parts of the university system that we now have without gaining either excellence in research at universities or excellence in teaching at universities. This is all because of an ideological agenda to undermine a high-quality university system based on public provision,” Senator Carr said.