An earlier post looked at the objectives of ATEC, as set out in legislation introduced yesterday. This post looks at mission based compacts, the key instrument of ATEC control over universities.

All legislative references, unless otherwise specified, are to the Universities Accord (Australian Tertiary Education Commission) Bill 2025.

Entering into mission based compacts is a function of ATEC: section 11(b).

Purpose of mission based compacts

Since the Universities Accord Final Report the term ‘mission based compact’ has been ambiguous. Whose mission will the compacts implement, the government’s mission or the university’s mission?

The ATEC bill tries to have it both ways. Section 28 describes the purpose of compacts as giving the ‘provider flexibility to pursue their goals and mission’ while also contributing to an ATEC statement of priorities for the sector, diversity in the system, and meeting the needs of the provider’s students and community.

The bill’s explanatory memorandum offers this passage of doublethink:

“Compacts will enable providers to demonstrate how their unique mission – the institution’s core purpose, values, and goals – aligns with national, state and local priorities, planning, and strategy, as well as industry engagement and innovations in learning and teaching. Informed by strategic priorities identified in the Statement of Strategic Priorities…”

How is a mission unique if it aligns with national priorities? All section 28 means, I think, is that universities can still pursue objectives not specified by ATEC, provided that these do not conflict with any requirements ATEC imposes. The extensiveness of those requirements will determine how much scope for independent action remains.

What will be in the compacts?

The content of mission based compacts will be driven by a ministerial statement of short-term and long-term strategic priorities: section 15. ATEC must prepare its own statement of strategic priorities: section 43. ATEC must take the minister’s priorities into account when performing its functions: section 15(4). ATEC must also prepare a work plan: section 45. All these must be published and will signal the direction of mission-based compacts.

The key question, then, is what constraints are imposed on compact content? The answer is not many. The minister and ATEC will be guided by the section 3 objectives discussed in the previous post, but these are very broad.

Other documents given to providers, but not so far as I have seen released to the public, mention a long list of things that could be included in compacts: quality of teaching, student experience, First Nations outcomes, equity growth and outcomes, research quality, research training, campus strategy, regional delivery, collaboration across and beyond the system, international strategy including diversification, industry engagement, and tertiary harmonisation.

Under the current system, despite some misuse of conditions in the funding agreements, most of these matters are regulated through specific statutory provisions. The detail is usually in legislative instruments that are disallowable by either the Senate or the House of Representatives.

The current system provides some parliamentary protection and means that the rules are clearly known in advance and, in theory, subject to judicial review if the government acts outside its legislated authority (although universities rarely take the government to court).

Neither the minister’s strategic priorities nor ATEC’s priorities statements are legislative instruments: sections 15(6) and 43(8).

Under the new system ATEC will be able to divide and conquer with separate compacts with each university. ATEC’s control over funding will effectively give it a large amount of power subject to light legislative constraint.

Constraints on ATEC

There are some constraints on ATEC. A compact that did not let the university ‘meet the higher education needs of the provider’s students and community’ would contradict the Act: section 28(c).

ATEC is required to ‘consider’, but not necessarily take into account, the goals, mission, strategic plan, geographic location and local community’ of the provider: section 29(2)(c).

ATEC is required to ‘consider’, but not necessarily take into account, ‘the effect (if any) the proposed terms may have on the academic freedom of the provider’: section 29(2)e). This somewhat eccentric use of ‘academic freedom’ is a cross-reference to the Higher Education Support Act 2003 definition that includes ‘the autonomy of the higher education provider in relation to the choice of academic courses and offerings, the ways in which they are taught and the choices of research activities and the ways in which they are conducted.’

The difficulty with just having to ‘consider’ these things is that it does not provide any workable legal remedy if ATEC decides to ignore the provider’s mission or breach the ‘academic freedom’ of the provider.

The compacts must also include ‘terms that specify measurable performance indicators relevant to the provider’s goals or mission’ and set out the methodologies to be used to assess performance: section 29(4). This helps avoid purely subjective assessments of provider performance.

I don’t, however, see any obligation on ATEC to ensure that performance indicators have a strong social science basis. The explanatory memorandum’s statement about ‘aspirational and ambitious indicators’ suggest that the numbers will just be made up, based on an increment above the status quo. Universities will get equity enrolment targets, but for all the money that has been spent on equity research over the decades nobody has done very basic work, such as trying to estimate how many people with equity backgrounds might benefit from higher education and be willing to give it a try. Even very obvious sources of data, such as Year 12 enrolments, have not been utilised on any routine basis.

Default compacts

I have seen some criticism of the default compacts that will apply if ATEC and providers cannot agree on the terms of a mission based compact: division 3. If there has been a previous compact the default compact can be the same as the old one: section 37(3). While I expect there are issues here, this is an improvement on the current situation under HESA 2003, when if there is no current funding agreement the Department legally cannot provide any Commonwealth Grant Scheme funding. The default compact can keep the money flowing while agreement on a new compact is sought.

Which providers will have compacts?

ATEC will enter into mission-based compacts with Table A and Table B providers (public universities and most private universities) and assess providers against the terms of those compacts: sections 11(b), 27. Non-university higher education providers are not eligible for compacts.

While section 19-110 of the Higher Education Support Act 2003 has a similar provider scope for mission based compacts, under that legislation compacts are just statements about what providers are doing in various areas. I am concerned about Table B providers being on this list, as compacts under the new compacts regime can include many prescriptive requirements and goals.

In funding terms, Table B providers differ from non-university higher education providers mainly in their access to research funding programs, although the amounts they get are low. They are not funded to deliver on other government goals other than some money under the Indigenous Student Success Program, which in practice only Bond University receives.

The situation of Table B providers may be helped by ATEC being required to ‘consider the goals, missions, strategic plan…’ of the provider: section 29(2)(c). The compacts are also supposed to enable the provider to ‘contribute to diversity within the higher education system’: section 28(a).