Education is far too important to be left to the market, the NTEU argues.

The National Tertiary Education Union’s submission to the Coaldrake Review of Provider Caetgory Standards makes a case for the status quo.

The  union argues the review should not consider lowering entry barriers, pointing to the VET FEE HELP catastrophe as an example of what can occur when competition increases. “Education is far too important to be left to the market. Any attempts to weaken the gatekeeper role of the existing PCS and standards framework would be a serious mistake,” the union argues.

The NTEU specifically calls for:

* a “coherent taxonomy”of qualifications across post-secondary education. This fits its call for an independent system regulator

* a “tidy-up” of provider categories, with three classes, adult and community education, cross-sectoral and higher education, “there is also capacity for finer grained sub-categories such as universities of specialisation and overseas universities.”

* no categories of teaching-only, or research-only universities.

* universities to offer research higher degrees in no less than half the undergraduate fields it teaches

The NTEU’s position in restricting the university title to institutions that have it already is in-line with submissions from university lobbies.