The university is re-registered for the max seven years – with two conditions

The Tertiary Education Quality Standards Agency commends the University of Tasmania for demonstrable commitment to access and equity and a “sound commitment to continuous improvement of its learning, teaching and research activities.”

However, there are two buts, and one is big.

The lesser is a requirement for an annual “program of reviews of the university’s full suite of policies and procedures to ensure that the university’s policy framework is current and effective.”

The greater is that meetings of academic senate must receive “a comprehensive diagnostic analysis of rates and trends in student performance data, including progression rates, attrition rates and completion time and rates.”

The analysis is required to include students’, entry pathway, including via third-parties, education agent and country of origin, and “comparative student achievement in similar courses at other Australian universities.”

CMM guesses it could have been much worse. Back in May U Tas commissioned Hilary Winchester to review student admissions, importantly including for internationals, (CMM May 7 and 24), which she duly did. In July, the university adopted all her 19 recommendations.

As a way of demonstrating a commitment to standards it was hard to beat and maybe, maybe, it demonstrated to TEQSA that Uni Tas was on the international admissions case. TEQSA takes international admissions very seriously indeed (CMM, Monday).