The first hearing of the NSW Parliament\u2019s inquiry into the university sector put a sharp spotlight on a problem university staff have been raising for years: our public universities have drifted too far from their public purpose.<\/p>\n
NSW universities are not private corporations. They were created by Acts of Parliament. They hold billions of dollars in public assets. They educate the teachers, nurses, health workers, engineers, researchers, lawyers, artists and public servants our communities rely on. They are central to the future of NSW.<\/p>\n
But increasingly they are being run through a corporate management model that treats staff, students and courses as costs to be managed, rather than as the foundation of the university itself.<\/p>\n
The opening expert panel made that point clearly. Professor Katie Barclay told the inquiry that universities have increasingly allowed money to become the governing logic of the institution, with disciplines, courses and expertise judged by financial return rather than public value. Professor Thomas Clarke, an expert in corporate governance, rejected the idea that university councils should simply behave like private-sector boards. Even modern corporate governance, he said, has moved toward broader stakeholder accountability. Universities, by contrast, appear to have adopted some of the worst and most outdated corporate habits: excessive executive pay, weak accountability, and decision-making removed from the people most affected by it. Professor John Quiggin described university councils as too often operating as an echo chamber or rubber stamp for senior executives.<\/p>\n
That evidence went directly to the case put by NTEU NSW. In the union\u2019s session, NSW Division Secretary Vince Caughley appeared alongside UTS Branch President Dr Sarah Attfield and former University of Wollongong Branch President Dr Fiona Probyn-Rapsey. Together, they made clear that the problem is not one vice-chancellor, one restructure, or one bad decision. It is a governance model that has become too closed, too executive-driven, and too insulated from staff, students, Parliament and the public.<\/p>\n
The NTEU evidence connected the big governance questions to the daily reality for university workers. Vince Caughley pointed to the structural reliance on insecure work, noting that casual employment exceeds 40 per cent of all people employed at NSW universities, and that once fixed-term contracts are included, almost 70 per cent of university workers are insecurely employed. Dr Sarah Attfield spoke from her own experience as a former casual academic, describing how universities rely on the goodwill of staff who want to support students, while denying them the security, time and resources to do that work properly. Dr Fiona Probyn-Rapsey reinforced that this experience is not exceptional; it is how too many academic careers now begin and, for many, remain. <\/p>\n
Across NSW, the pattern is now familiar: mass job cuts, course closures, unsafe restructures, wage underpayments, overuse of consultants, executive salaries far beyond public-sector standards, and limited transparency about how major decisions are made. The NTEU NSW submission points to at least $79 million repaid across NSW universities for wage underpayments, vice-chancellors commonly paid above $1 million, and more than $250 million in estimated consultant spending in 2023. SafeWork NSW has also issued notices at UTS and Macquarie over psychosocial risks during organisational change. <\/p>\n
At this first hearing, the focus was UTS. And no surprise. UTS is currently facing one of the most serious governance and workforce crises in the NSW sector: proposed cuts to around 400 jobs, SafeWork NSW intervention over psychosocial risk, dozens of courses and subjects under threat, and widespread staff and student concern about the direction of the university.<\/p>\n
The university\u2019s Operational Sustainability Initiative was presented by management as a necessary response to financial pressure. But staff and student evidence told a very different story. UTS academics Associate Professor Peter Docherty, Professor Stephen Taylor, Professor David Brown, Professor Martin Bugeja, Professor Sue Wright and Dr Robert Czernkowski gave evidence on their alternative proposal. They accepted that change was needed, but challenged the scale, speed and financial assumptions behind the restructure. Their evidence was that UTS\u2019s \u201cchange everything at once\u201d approach, developed with the involvement of external consultants, created serious operational, reputational and financial risk, and that a more measured and collegial approach would be more likely to achieve long-term sustainability. <\/p>\n
Students also gave strong evidence about being shut out of decisions that directly affect their education. UTS Students\u2019 Association President Mia Campbell appeared with Welfare Officer Neeve Nagle and Ethnocultural Officer Salma Elmubasher. Campbell told the inquiry that the change proposal was not even sent to the Association, student representatives on Academic Board, or student members of UTS Council, because the university framed the cuts as a staffing matter. Yet the result was a 31 per cent reduction in subjects. For students, that is not an internal staffing issue. It is the substance of their education. <\/p>\n
One of the most telling moments came when questions turned to how UTS Council members handled concerns raised by staff, students and even the inquiry itself. Rather than showing a clear culture of independent scrutiny, some evidence suggested a reflex to refer matters back through university management. That is the governance problem in miniature: councils that should be holding executives to account can end up relying on the very executives they are meant to scrutinise.<\/p>\n
This is why NSW Government action is required.<\/p>\n
University autonomy should protect teaching, research, inquiry and public debate. It should not be a shield for opaque financial decisions, unsafe restructures, excessive executive pay, consultant-driven change, or the erosion of courses that serve the public good.<\/p>\n
NSW needs a modern governance framework for its universities: stronger public reporting, NSW Auditor-General performance audits, enforceable public-good duties in university Acts, proper scrutiny of consultants and executive remuneration, transparent reporting on workforce impacts, and councils with majority elected staff and student representation.<\/p>\n
The first hearing showed that the evidence is now on the public record. The task is to turn that evidence into reform \u2014 and to restore our universities as genuinely public institutions, accountable to the communities they exist to serve.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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