A previous post outlined the contents of the Universities Accord (National Student Ombudsman) Bill introduced into parliament last week. This post examines its implications for academic life.

Although the bill generally exempts curriculum content or assessment methods from review by the Ombudsman, the minister will be able to over-ride these exemptions with a legislative instrument.

Students will use the Ombudsman to pressure academics for special consideration and to avoid discipline for misconduct. This creates an incentive for academics to accept questionable claims and overlook likely cheating rather than risk wasting time on an Ombudsman investigation.

The post’s section references are to the bill.

Academic judgment

The Ombudsman legislation does not permit student complaints ‘to the extent that the action involves the exercise of academic judgment’: section 21AD(3)(c).

The bill’s explanatory memorandum gives as examples of excluded complaints (p. 23) ‘decisions about the academic merit of a grade awarded, the content of a curriculum, and teaching and assessment methods.’

But section 21AD(4) undoes this by stating that exceptions can be over-ridden by the National Student Ombudsman Rules.

The National Student Ombudsman Rules would be a legislative instrument made by the minister for higher education.

The explanatory memorandum says this provision ‘gives additional flexibility in the event that the definition of excluded action was inappropriately limiting the matters that students could complain about’ (p. 24).

A history of interference with academic judgment

There is a recent history of governments intervening in matters that would normally involve academic judgment.

The previous government vetoed ARC grants on arbitrary grounds. In a rare exception to its normal preference for increased intervention, the current government put constraints on the veto power without ending it entirely.

The current government put required course content into the START-UP HELP funding guidelines.

The current government has made some teacher education funding conditional on course content. (Despite what the link says the guidelines are in force via the Other Grants compilation.)

The government may determine the content of the FEE-FREE Uni Ready courses.

In the context of the politics of the ombudsman legislation, the action plan on gender-based violence contains the following statement, emphasis added :

‘As part of a whole-of-organisation approach to prevent gender-based violence, teaching staff should be supported to build their own capacity and the capacity of others to promote gender equality, respect, diversity and inclusion in how, and what, they teach and research.’

Academics should treat all students in a professional manner, but there should be no pressure to adopt government-mandated political perspectives or priorities in teaching or research. Whatever people might think about gender issues, normalising this kind of pressure, with Ombudsman complaints or other methods, sets a bad precedent.

Thee requirement to use a legislative instrument to implement the National Student Ombudsman Rules provides some protection. Either house of parliament could disallow a reduction in academic judgment. But legislative instruments get much less attention than legislation. Of the examples above of governments straying into academic territory, only the ARC grant vetoes attracted significant negative public comment.

If the academic judgment provisions need changing, in the government’s view, make them take it back to the parliament with an amendment to the Act.

Section 21AD(4) should be removed from the bill.

Special consideration

In describing what is not a matter of academic judgment, the explanatory memorandum gives the grant of special consideration as an example (p. 23).

In my view, special consideration is a borderline case of whether it is an academic judgment or not – it is a decision about whether the circumstances used to support the special consideration claim warrant a change in how or when academic assessment occurs.

Anecdotally, dubious claims for special consideration have increased significantly over recent years.

The Ombudsman will not necessarily side with the student in these cases. The existing Overseas Student Ombudsman (which only covers private providers and has a different brief to the National Student Ombudsman) rejects a fluctuating but non-trivial share of complaints.

But if the Ombudsman decides that there might be something to the student’s claim, academics could be required to provide information and appear in person to discuss the case: sections 21AZA(1).

Knowing that academics will want to avoid such time wasting lets students weaponise the Ombudsman – accept my claim to special consideration or I will lodge a complaint.

Disciplinary and misconduct matters

The explanatory memorandum also classes ‘disciplinary and misconduct procedures’ as non-academic, even it seems if they are about academic matters. It claims that (p. 23):

‘Policies and procedures about academic matters can be considered by the National Student Ombudsman as the content of these policies and procedures does not involve the exercise of academic judgment.’

But an academic misconduct case will always involve an academic judgment.

Making it harder for academics to penalise cheating and other academic misconduct would exacerbate one of the sector’s biggest problems.

The cheating industry is already very aggressive. USYD received a bomb threat. It would be naive to think that the cheating industry would not facilitate Ombudsman complaints to deter universities that already face high costs when penalising cheats.

Conclusion

As I said in my first post on this subject, students can have reasonable grounds for complaint. Universities are large, decentralised organisations with light scrutiny of day-to-day academic work, limited resources and multiple conflicting missions. They don’t have the strict quality control of other industries. In specific cases, some good will come of Ombudsman investigations and recommendations.

But I am not convinced that a National Student Ombudsman would be a net positive development.

In a time of AI and mass cheating, undermining the authority of academics will not help in the battle to maintain the credibility of degrees.

While there is nothing wrong with general questioning of the content of university curriculum, students should not be able to complain to the Ombudsman that their course content does not comply with the official line on diversity, inclusion, etc. Once this starts the other side of politics will, some time in the future, flip the system so that students can complain about ‘woke’ academics, or whatever the culture war issue of the day turns out to be.

We must question whether the government’s driving up of bureaucratic costs for universities – this Ombudsman, the support for students legislation, micro-allocation and reporting of CSPs, universities running means tests for the Prac Payments, caps on international students potentially down to the course level, potential ATEC micromanagement – can possibly lead to a better higher education system.