The head of a new "system steward" for higher education wants to put an end to the cycle of boom and bust in Australian universities.
It's a cycle Canberra's universities know all too well with hundreds of jobs shed at the University of Canberra and the Australian National Universities in recent years.
Chief commissioner of the newly created Australian Tertiary Education Commission (ATEC) Professor Barney Glover hopes that he can steer the sector into a new era of stability.
Professor Glover was a vice-chancellor at several universities over 15 years and has experienced the volatility of the sector.
From student enrolment downturns, to policy changes and global events like the COVID pandemic, he knows what it's like to have to downsize when revenues plummet.
"We need to be able to give them that opportunity where there's not the boom and bust and that there can be stability," Professor Glover told The Canberra Times.
"I think it's going to be one of the most important outcomes from the introduction of the system steward."
The idea of ATEC was put forward in the Universities Accord review in 2023. Rather than being the system regulator - which is the role of the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA) - it was to set a new relationship between universities and government.
"Stewardship is a different concept. It's a leadership concept, but it's a leadership through negotiation and facilitation, engagement, and taking a system view rather than an institution by institution view," the chief commissioner said.
Universities will begin negotiating mission based compacts next week. These documents will outline how universities will respond to certain strategic priorities set by ATEC.
In the first round of mission based compacts, institutions will need to address areas of skills shortages, increasing participation from First Nations students and those from low socio-economic and rural and regional backgrounds.
They also must show how they will lift the quality of teaching, how they will better integrate with TAFE and vocational education providers and how they will boost research training for PhD and research masters students.
From 2028, the compacts will be negotiated every four years. ATEC will check in on their progress each year and make a report to Parliament.
Under legislation going through Parliament, ATEC will be responsible for allocating additional places for domestic students from low socio-economic backgrounds, rural and regional areas.
It will also allocate international student places to universities and other provider after the education minister sets the overall number of new students.
But Professor Glover said there won't be "punitive action" if universities don't meet their goals.
"We don't punish a university because they've failed to reach a target ... we negotiate to reach agreement with a provider about the envelope of both domestic student places and international student places, which that university believes that they can both track those students and deliver a high quality educational experience.
"So, from that perspective, it's not about punitive action by the ATEC at all. It's very much about working as a system steward."
The government has set ambitious targets to increase the portion of working-aged Australians with tertiary qualifications to more than 80 per cent. A large portion of these people will come from under-represented groups so universities will have to work hard to support them to finish their courses.
"We don't want students to accumulate debt and then not have an opportunity for the benefit of a tertiary education. So retention and success and completions are vitally important," Professor Glover said.
Some universities enrol domestic students who do not have a Commonwealth Supported Place, meaning they only get student fees for that student and no government funding. Professor Glover hopes moving to the new funding model will curtail that practice so that all students are fully funded.
One of the most contentious elements of the university sector is the Morrison-era Job Ready Graduate's scheme, which inflated the student fees for arts, humanities and law degrees in a bid to get students to enrol in certain domains.
It has not had an impact on student course choices but it has landed students with extra student debt.
ATEC is looking at the cost of delivering university courses and will deliver advice to the government in the second half of next year.
"We want to do this as rapidly as we can. We've got to do it well, because if we don't do it well, I think we'll let down generations of people studying in higher education," Professor Glover said.
International students have historically been a lucrative source of revenue for universities. But the days of growing this cohort could be over.
The government has set the maximum number of new international students at 295,000 for next year, the same amount that was allowed this year.
"Australian universities need to be planning over the next three, four years and beyond potentially to work within not so much a growth scenario but a stable scenario for international student numbers, which means they can also then be negotiating with the ATEC about the growth needed in our domestic student profile," Professor Glover said.
"We want our universities to fundamentally, of course, respond to the needs of the Australian economy, the Australian workforce, and the Australian community more broadly."
Professor Glover believes the rest of the world will watch carefully as Australia moves from a demand-driven system to a managed-growth system.
"It's an important ability to reset the system and properly fund the system, and it will be, I think, watched internationally to see how Australia fares in this really important higher education reform."
