There seems to be no agreement among government policy and regulatory agencies on what tertiary education regulation is actually for. That sounds funny, except that it is hugely expensive, and that students are the ones who will pay the higher bill.
Over the past five years, the tertiary education sector and the institutions supporting students, communities and our economies have absorbed relentless waves of reform and greater regulatory burden.
That’s just sector-specific regulation, not including broader business changes in areas such as workplace relations, superannuation or cybersecurity.
Each reform brings new reporting, governance and systems requirements. And none brought forward in the tertiary education sector have come with a cumulative impact analysis.
Now yet more is asked of higher education. Amendments to the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency Act 2011 (TEQSA Act) are proposed, and a consultation paper released with days to comment and no technical background. While there is a suite of amendments proposed in this package, the key issue here is the cumulative effect on the sector. ITECA provided a response to the package and has made it available.
Here’s the absurdity though. The Australian Skills Quality Authority, ASQA, long criticised for its audit-driven, external enforcement approach, has learned from TEQSA and embraced self-assurance regulation. This has been largely positive.
The 2025 Standards for RTOs expect providers to understand, monitor and demonstrate their own compliance against outcome-focused standards, freeing the regulator to chase real risk. To a large extent, this allows RTOs to demonstrate compliance within their own circumstances.
Meanwhile, TEQSA is being pushed the other way, toward the command-and-control philosophy ASQA abandoned. A power to direct “the way” in which an institution meets outcome-based Threshold Standards contradicts the Threshold Standards and TEQSA’s founding philosophy. Either a regulator trusts regulated entities to understand their own context, or it doesn’t. Regardless, it needs to pick a lane.
And who pays? Not government. From 2027 TEQSA proposes lifting cost recovery for its activities. The 5 days of consultation of TEQSA’s cost recovery proposal were insulting. There is no magic pudding. Every compliance dollar flows into the cost base of an institution. These costs inevitably flow to consumers – students. Policymakers and regulators know this. Ultimately this is a sort of hidden tax on learning, and students, domestic and international, pay it.
Beneath all this seems to be a deeper problem: governments increasingly don’t trust the system, perhaps because there is a deeper misunderstanding about it. Independent providers make up 77% of higher education institutions and 92% of all RTOs, most of them small and specialist. However, policy is written as if the sector were more uniform.
When policymakers can’t see how a system works, how diverse it is, they instinctively reach for greater control. Powers substitute for engagement and understanding. Penalties increase as a substitute for partnership and insight.
There is no need for a radical solution. Publish a cumulative regulatory impact assessment of all measures across tertiary education over the past 5 years. That’s the starting point.
All regulated entities in the sector – public and independent – must stand firm and oppose the full package of ‘reform’ to the TEQSA Act purely on the basis that enough is enough. Two days of consultation is contemptuous of the sector.
Australia’s tertiary education system needs regulation that is fair, speedy, proportionate and focused on genuine risk. What’s on the table is bigger, costlier and more intrusive, with no case made that it will be any better.
Felix Pirie is the Chief Executive Officer of ITECA.
The Koala thanks Felix and ITECA for permission to publish this piece, which first appeared in the ITECA Newsletter (9/11/26).
