The latest hearing of the NSW Parliament\u2019s inquiry into the university sector showed two different but connected governance problems: at the University of Sydney, a wealthy institution where staff say management culture shuts down genuine voice; and at the University of New England, a regional university still carrying the damage of past governance failures.<\/p>\n
The day opened with Sydney University\u2019s Senior Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Provost, Professor Annamarie Jagose. The university\u2019s position was that it supports transparency and is reviewing its practices in light of this and other governance inquiries. But the questioning quickly exposed the limits of that approach.<\/p>\n
One key issue was consultant disclosure. Sydney University was pressed on why it relies on a reporting exemption that allows university senates, councils and boards not to disclose consultant engagements in the same way as other spending. The university\u2019s answer was essentially that it complies with current requirements and would comply if they changed. That is precisely the problem. Public universities should not wait to be forced into transparency. If a university is spending public and student money on consultants, workforce planning, benchmarking or restructuring advice, staff, students and the public should be able to see what was commissioned, why, from whom, and at what cost.<\/p>\n
Sydney\u2019s evidence also raised serious questions about how its senate understands accountability. The inquiry heard that senate fellows are advised to regard senate committees and the vice-chancellor as their principal sources of information and advice. That matters because the senate is supposed to scrutinise management, not rely on management as its main channel of truth. The risk is a governance culture where information flows upward and inward, rather than outward to staff, students and the wider university community.<\/p>\n
The NTEU session then put the staff experience on the record. Sydney University Branch President Dr Peter Chen appeared alongside Professor Laura Shepherd and Professor John Buchanan. Their evidence was clear: Sydney is not in the same immediate crisis as UTS, UOW or Macquarie, but the same structural problem is present \u2014 centralised management, weak staff voice and governance processes that too often treat consultation as a formality.<\/p>\n
Dr Chen described the university senate as sitting in an \u201cinformation bubble\u201d created and maintained by management. He told the inquiry that, after being elected branch president, he reached out to senate fellows to discuss the union\u2019s concerns, but very few took up the invitation. When he later presented to the senate\u2019s People and Culture Committee about poor Sydney Listens results, including that only 50 per cent of staff felt able to voice a contrary opinion without fear of negative consequences, he received no questions.<\/p>\n
Professor Shepherd gave equally troubling evidence from the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. She said the faculty had scored lowest across the university in 50 of 67 Sydney Listens fields, including confidence in the university executive and trust in senior leaders. A psychosocial risk review had identified poor procedural justice and lack of accountability for senior leaders, with staff reporting that those who raised concerns were seen as problematic and could be denied development opportunities.<\/p>\n
Professor Buchanan\u2019s evidence from the Business School showed how this culture plays out in practice. He described a \u201ccompliance-driven\u201d approach to consultation: many meetings, many forms, many opportunities to submit comments, but little genuine collaboration. Staff were consulted, but not heard. He said the Business School change process had triggered 19 mass meetings in 18 months and that a vote of no confidence by more than 170 NTEU members found only 18 per cent had confidence in the dean.<\/p>\n
The second major focus was UNE. Vice-Chancellor Professor Chris Moran gave evidence about UNE\u2019s regional role and the importance of Armidale and the broader New England community to the university\u2019s mission. That regional role is real and important. But the NTEU evidence from UNE showed how badly governance can fail when councils are disconnected from the lived experience of staff.<\/p>\n
UNE witnesses Dr Craig Johnson, Associate Professor Eric Ghosh and Dr Elizabeth Temple described a university still recovering from a period of deep institutional damage. Dr Johnson traced the crisis to the appointment of former vice-chancellor Brigid Heywood and the \u201cTime for Change\u201d restructure, which aimed to remove around 200 jobs from a university of only about 1,200 staff. He described a non-transparent voluntary redundancy process and a broader governance failure that left staff with little effective recourse.<\/p>\n
Associate Professor Ghosh pointed directly to council structure: too few elected staff representatives, council members disconnected from the institution, and elected members feeling marginalised and muzzled. Dr Temple\u2019s evidence was especially stark. She said staff had reported serious concerns about the former vice-chancellor\u2019s conduct, that council was aware, and that staff were left to suffer in a state of fear.<\/p>\n
Together, the Sydney and UNE evidence showed why NSW Government action is required.<\/p>\n
Governance reform cannot stop at council composition alone. It must reach consultant transparency, executive bonuses, staff voice, leadership appointments, psychosocial safety, academic governance and the structures that determine who gets heard when decisions are made.<\/p>\n
University autonomy should protect teaching, research and academic freedom. It should not protect secrecy, managerial control, weak accountability or staff cultures where people fear speaking up.<\/p>\n
NSW needs modern university Acts with enforceable public-good duties, stronger reporting, transparent consultant disclosure, Auditor-General performance audits, and councils and senates with majority elected staff and student representation. The lesson from Sydney and UNE is simple: without democratic accountability, even very different universities can drift away from the people and communities they exist to serve.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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