Student support rules ‘could stifle recruitment’

New obligations to support struggling students could stifle admissions from the very groups the rules were designed to assist, Australian university representatives have warned.

Alec Webb, executive director of the Regional Universities Network, said his members were worried about the “punitive nature” of proposals requiring them to develop new student support policies.

The requirements are spelled out in a bill abolishing the “50 per cent fail rule” and boosting university places for urban Indigenous students – measures the university sector wholeheartedly supports. The bill specifies penalties of A$18,780 (£9,600) any time a student is judged to have failed because a university did not adequately follow its student support policies.

Mr Webb told a Senate committee, which is enquiring into the legislation, that universities’ worries about “the additional compliance costs” could “change institutional behaviour in providing opportunities to all students”.

He said Australian universities already spent about A$500 million a year on “compliance-based” reporting. “These costs are significant and real, especially for smaller regional based universities that cannot operate at scale. These costs draw away from university support activities including scholarships.”

Margaret Sheil, deputy chair of representative body Universities Australia (UA), said financial advice was among the types of support the government proposed to mandate. She said universities would have no idea that financial advice was needed “unless students present to us as being financially challenged”.

Yet a discussion paper on the proposals suggests that universities could face fines for not providing this sort of support. “There is a risk…that [this requirement] runs counter to the agenda to improve access, if universities are going to be discouraged from taking on students who might be financially at risk,” Professor Sheil warned.

UA chief executive Catriona Jackson said the proposals risked creating “undue administrative burden” by requiring universities to report to the education minister on their compliance with the new rules.

Ms Jackson said universities were already obliged to report to the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (Teqsa) on their compliance with legislated responsibilities. The proposal would “duplicate reporting of the same student support policy measures to…two different parts of government”.

Teqsa commissioner Adrienne Nieuwenhuis confirmed that her agency already regulated student support requirements. “We would need to work closely with the department [of education] to ensure that we’re not creating regulatory burden [and] mitigate any issues of duplication across the two regulatory schemas,” she told the hearing.

Ms Nieuwenhuis said Teqsa had not been consulted on the bill but would be “making a submission as part of the consultation process”.

The bill has passed the house of representatives but is yet to be debated in the Senate. Education minister Jason Clare told parliament that the debate would occur in October, following consultations on the new requirements.

He said he had instructed the department to release draft guidelines on the support policy rules before the debate.

Ms Jackson welcomed this, but said the measures in the bill should nevertheless be delayed. “Providers need time to fully understand their obligations under this new policy and make the necessary changes,” she told the hearing.

The committee was due to report its findings on 13 September. It now intends to report two weeks later.

john.ross@timeshighereducation.com