The eighth and final public hearing of the NSW parliamentary inquiry brought together universities at opposite ends of the sector: Southern Cross University, the State’s smallest university, and UNSW, Australia’s highest-ranked university.
Their scale, wealth and institutional histories could hardly be more different. But the evidence across the day showed how much they have in common: executive decisions imposed despite staff and student warnings, pay and power concentrated at the top, weak transparency, reliance on consultants and governing councils largely insulated from meaningful accountability.
The importance of the inquiry was underlined at the outset. Chair Sarah Kaine again raised reports that witnesses feared reprisals from senior university leaders and that some had been questioned about evidence they gave. She warned managers to consider how their actions could be experienced as threatening in the sensitive context of the inquiry.
SCU: executive pay and the regional mission
Southern Cross University Vice-Chancellor Tyrone Carlin was questioned immediately about his remuneration. The Committee contrasted SCU’s position as NSW’s smallest university, ranked 634th internationally, with UNSW’s top-20 ranking, noting that Carlin’s reported remuneration had increased by around $240,000 over three years.
Carlin said his fixed remuneration was $870,000 and that the higher figure in the annual report reflected accounting treatment. He said the university’s People and Culture Committee benchmarked his pay against 13 or 14 other universities. However, the Committee heard that no elected staff or student representative had ever served on the committee responsible for executive remuneration.
Questions also returned to SCU’s statutory obligation to serve the North Coast. Carlin defended the university’s Gold Coast and metropolitan expansion as essential to its sustainability. But the exchange highlighted a central concern raised by NTEU members: whether SCU’s growth strategy has shifted management attention and resources away from Lismore, Coffs Harbour and the communities it was established to serve.
The Southern Cross six-by-six teaching model was also scrutinised. Carlin pointed to improved student success and retention, but Chair Sarah Kaine said she “shuddered” at the administrative burden. SCU’s so-called balanced academic workload is already 60 per cent teaching, 30 per cent research and 10 per cent service. Carlin relied partly on informal conversations with staff to claim that the model was now well accepted, while agreeing to provide staff survey results.
UNSW: management experiments come at a cost
At UNSW, Provost Vlado Perkovic was questioned about the university’s decision to abandon its trimester system and introduce a new “flex-semester” calendar from 2028.
UNSW introduced trimesters in 2019 despite substantial staff and student opposition. Perkovic acknowledged that concerns about workload had been realised and that staff and student wellbeing was among the reasons for reversing course. The latest transition is expected to cost approximately $66 million, with the Committee also seeking the cost of introducing trimesters in the first place.
The Committee examined UNSW’s wage theft and remediation program. Perkovic apologised unreservedly and conceded there had been insufficient central oversight. But the Committee questioned why a university with enormous internal expertise continued paying Deloitte while its systems remained inadequate.
UNSW staff witnesses directly challenged management’s account of consultation. They described a deeply unpopular calendar change pursued despite repeated warnings about educational standards, student distress and staff overwork. The university was now requiring those same staff to redesign courses yet again, bearing the cost of another management reversal.
The same story from students
Student witnesses reinforced the evidence given by staff. They described consultation without meaningful power, major decisions made without proper accountability and student representatives dependent on management for access and funding.
The trimester decision was again raised as an example of a costly and disruptive change imposed despite opposition. National Union of Students representatives argued that simply placing one or two students on a council was not enough if staff and students remained unable to genuinely test or alter executive decisions.
The figures do not tell the whole story
Professors James Guthrie and Adam Lucas then provided a sector-wide overview of university financial reporting and governance.
Their central warning was that university accounts are not neutral or self-explanatory. Different accounting measures can create very different impressions of an institution’s position. Commercial accounting concepts can then be used to justify restructures and job losses in public institutions whose purpose is education, research and community service.
They also exposed the opacity surrounding consultancy expenditure. Lucas said NSW universities spent more than $640 million on consultants in 2024, while national expenditure may have reached $1.8 billion. Universities can bury these costs in broad categories such as professional services, contract services and other expenses, preventing meaningful scrutiny.
Workforce reporting is similarly unreliable. Universities report different employment numbers to annual reports, the Federal Department of Education and the charities regulator. Reporting dates frequently fall when casual teaching staff are no longer formally employed, systematically obscuring a workforce that constitutes almost half of university employees nationally.
Academics call for universities to be reclaimed
The day concluded with representatives of the Australian Association of University Professors, who argued that universities were failing their public mission because authority had shifted from academic communities to an increasingly powerful managerial class.
Their call for democratic, scholar-led governance echoed the evidence heard throughout the inquiry: executive management had become detached from staff and students, consultation was too often tokenistic and councils were failing to provide effective accountability.
Reform must follow the inquiry
Across eight hearings, every NSW public university has now appeared before the Committee. From the smallest regional institution to a multibillion-dollar sandstone university, the same pattern has emerged.
Executives and consultants exercise enormous power. Staff and students bear the consequences. Councils approve the decisions but face little effective scrutiny. Financial and workforce reporting obscures as much as it reveals.
The inquiry’s final report is expected to be tabled next month. But recommendations alone will not be enough. They must be implemented.
NTEU members will push the NSW Government to deliver the reforms our public universities so urgently need: more democratic university councils with stronger elected staff and student representation; transparent reporting of executive remuneration, consultants, job losses, insecure employment and workforce numbers; independent oversight of complaints, governance and misconduct; genuine consultation before major workplace and academic change; and legislation that requires universities to serve their staff, students and communities.
This is a generational opportunity to correct the lack of transparency, the excess and the poor governance that have taken hold across the sector, and to recalibrate our universities towards their public mission.
Universities are public institutions. Their governance must reflect that public purpose.
