The third hearing of the NSW Parliament’s inquiry into the university sector went to the heart of one of the biggest problems in NSW universities: the growing role of consultants in shaping public institutions, without the transparency, accountability or public scrutiny that should come with it.
Consultants are not the whole problem. But the hearing showed why consultant influence has become such a powerful symbol of what has gone wrong. Public universities are cutting staff, closing courses, squeezing research, restructuring faculties and telling students there is no alternative — while spending large sums on external advice that is often difficult to find, difficult to understand and difficult to test.
That is exactly the problem NTEU NSW has been raising throughout this inquiry. In the first hearing, NTEU NSW Secretary Vince Caughley, UTS Branch President Dr Sarah Attfield and former UOW Branch President Dr Fiona Probyn-Rapsey identified consultant dependency as one of the clearest signs of governance failure. The union’s evidence was that NSW universities were being governed too much like private corporations, but without the transparency and accountability expected of institutions managing billions in public assets.
The third hearing put that issue under the microscope.
Professor Corinne Cortese, Professor of Accounting at the University of Wollongong, gave some of the most important evidence of the inquiry so far. Her research began with university council composition, but led her directly to the relationship between corporatised governance and consultant reliance. Across NSW universities, she found councils heavily weighted toward corporate, finance, industry and consulting backgrounds, with limited elected staff representation and limited higher education experience.
That matters because who sits around the council table shapes what kind of advice is valued. A council dominated by corporate networks is more likely to see consultants as the natural answer. A council with stronger staff and student representation is more likely to ask: who inside the university already has the expertise? What will this do to teaching, research and workload? What does the evidence actually show?
Professor Cortese’s evidence on spending was even more striking. She told the inquiry that she found around $640 million in consulting-related expenditure across NSW universities in 2024, but also made clear how hard it is to know exactly what that figure means. Some universities report consultants as a clear line item. Others bury the spending in categories such as “contract services”, “professional fees”, “consultants and contractors” or “other expenses”. The result is a reporting mess. Even an accounting professor found it difficult to work out how much was being spent, on whom, and for what purpose.
That should alarm everyone.
If public universities are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on consultants, the public should be able to see where the money is going. Staff should be able to understand whether consultant advice is being used to justify job cuts and restructures. Students should be able to know whether money that could support teaching, libraries, course offerings or student services is instead being directed to external firms.
The problem is not just the total spend. It is the opacity. Professor Cortese examined more than 2,200 GIPA records across NSW universities and found registers that were difficult to locate, difficult to access and difficult to interpret, with missing, redacted, withheld and inconsistent information. She also identified a major reporting gap: where consulting engagements are commissioned by a university governing body or council, longstanding rules may mean they do not have to be reported in the same way. In other words, some of the most important engagements may be the least visible.
Dr David Bond from UNSW Business School reinforced the point. He explained that, while university annual reports can be navigated by people with financial expertise, spending on consultants, contractors and professional services is much harder for ordinary readers to unpack. He also pointed out that not all consultant spending appears as an expense; some can be capitalised into assets, such as capital works. At UTS, for example, the disclosed consultant spend was higher than the amount that appeared as an expense line.
The hearing also exposed the bigger cultural problem. Jack Thrower from the Australia Institute described a sector caught between public and private models: public money and public purpose, but without enough public accountability; corporate-style executive pay and competition, but without the same shareholder discipline as private firms. He warned that universities’ governance structures are not properly aligned with teaching, research or the welfare of staff and students.
Then came Nous Group.
Nous Managing Principal and CEO Timothy Orton and Principal Paul Taylor defended the firm’s work with universities, including its UniForum benchmarking program. They argued that their advice is data-driven and helps universities make better decisions. But the questioning highlighted the concern staff have felt for years: benchmarking and consultant reports can make cuts look technical, neutral and inevitable, when they are really choices about what kind of university we want.
One exchange captured the issue. Asked whether Nous’s work had benefited students, Mr Orton said that reducing a wide range of low-enrolment courses could allow universities to invest more in quality. But for students and staff, that is exactly the problem. A course is not a product line. A discipline is not a cost centre. A university’s job is not simply to keep the most financially efficient subjects and discard the rest.
This is why NSW Government action is required.
Universities should be able to seek external advice where it is genuinely needed. But consultant spending must be transparent, itemised and publicly reported. Consultant reports used to justify restructures, course closures or major workforce change should be disclosed. Council conflicts and affiliations must be visible. Universities should be required to explain why internal expertise was not used. And university councils must include enough elected staff and student representatives to test corporate advice against the real work of teaching, research and student support.
NSW universities are public institutions. Their decisions must be made in the public interest — not hidden behind opaque contracts, consultant frameworks and management reports that staff and students only see after the damage is done.
