Changing face of the sector
TEQSA kicked off 2022 by announcing the registration of Australia's fourth university college, Alphacrucis University College. And in October the registration of Australia's fifth university college, Australian College of Theology, was announced.
These announcements came after the categorisation of Australian higher education providers (providers) was updated in July 2021 under the Higher Education Standards Framework (Threshold Standards) 2021 and TEQSA's original decisions to refuse these providers registration as university colleges at that time.
The decisions demonstrate a real and achievable pathway for private providers to progress to registration as university colleges and, ultimately, universities if they meet the new regulatory standards. Having acted for both providers in the process, we take this opportunity to congratulate Alphacrucis University College and the Australian College of Theology on achieving these significant registrations.
TEQSA's Compliance Report
On 31 March 2022, TEQSA released its Compliance Report 2021 (Compliance Report). The Compliance Report summarises TEQSA compliance activities in 2021 and outlines TEQSA's core compliance priorities, key initiatives and areas of focus for 2022.
TEQSA outlined five compliance priorities for 2022:
- Ensuring academic quality by focusing on issues including systemic deterioration of academic quality, the admission of students ill-equipped to succeed, loss of professional accreditation and third-party mismanagement.
- Upholding the wellbeing and safety of students, including vulnerable students and minors, particularly focusing on preventing and addressing sexual assault and sexual harassment (SASH), providing adequate mental health support and addressing barriers for students with disabilities.
- Protecting sector integrity by focusing on fraud and criminality including awarding courses that have not been completed, the representation of higher education awards by unregistered institutions, the facilitation of non-genuine students, the unethical conduct of overseas agents, unethical competitive behaviours and contract cheating services.
- Maintaining information security by focusing on cyber security, inadequate system protection, research data, technology development and use, and intellectual property.
- Monitoring financial standing by focusing on issues affecting a provider's financial stability and viability, particularly insolvency, financial mismanagement, and a lack of resilience to shifts in revenue sources.
The Compliance Report also identified several key initiatives of focus in 2022, including:
- Contract cheating: TEQSA will continue to employ the full range of enforcement mechanisms available to them against persons providing or advertising academic cheating services.
- Oversight of offshore third-party arrangements: TEQSA will continue to monitor activity and risks relating to offshore third-party arrangements via material change notifications and any concerns received.
- Beyond COVID-19: TEQSA is focusing on ensuring providers are maintaining quality of education and learning outcomes in the wake of the change from on-campus to online learning. The focus will also be on ensuring that providers have adequate governance arrangements to support changes to learning environments.
- Increase intelligence holdings: TEQSA will engage with professional accrediting authorities, sector peak bodies and other regulatory authorities to establish more robust and effective data-sharing arrangements.
- Implementation of cost recovery for quality assurance and regulation: In April 2021, TEQSA released the TEQSA Fees and Charges Consultation Paper for feedback. The Paper outlined the proposed approach for transition to the new cost recovery arrangements. In 2022, TEQSA considered feedback and sought to refine the proposal to support the transition to the new arrangements which is scheduled for 1 January 2023.
We have witnessed TEQSA's focus on these matters over the last 12 months. Providers should continue to use the Compliance Report to inform risk management and quality assurance mechanisms.
TEQSA's Corporate Plan
On 30 August 2022, TEQSA released its Corporate Plan 2022-2026 (Corporate Plan), setting out its priorities for the next four years.
TEQSA has identified three broad strategic objectives in delivering to its role and functions as identified in its Corporate Plan:
- Promote and support good practice and effective self-assurance across the sector.
- Identify, analyse and respond to risks in the sector.
- Ensure compliance with applicable legislation through effective and efficient regulation.
Details also include the key activities TEQSA will take to meet the objectives, the performance measures and targets it will use to monitor progress to determine its effectiveness in meeting its role.
The Corporate Plan also addresses the impact and challenges of COVID-19 on the higher education sector and sets out seven priority activities to address the associated opportunities and challenges:
- Reviewing and adapting TEQSA’s regulatory model and practice.
- Maintaining a risk assessment focus on the financial viability of providers, particularly in relation to providers heavily reliant on overseas students.
- Further developing the capacity of TEQSA’s Higher Education Integrity Unit in relation to risk in areas such as commercial academic cheating, cyber security and foreign interference.
- Further developing TEQSA’s risk and compliance focus concerning student wellbeing, such as the issues of SASH and mental health.
- Working with the Department of Education and the Higher Education Standards Panel on priority projects such as modes of delivery, admissions transparency and research quality.
- Investing in its workforce and enabling systems.
- Implementing strategies to improve the timeliness and responsiveness of regulatory assessments and decisions.
Several of these priority activities continue as areas of focus for TEQSA in 2022, and again are matters on which we are seeing TEQSA engage with our clients in the higher education sector, both public and private.
Contract cheating
In accordance with the key initiatives outlined in its Compliance Report, and following the introduction of provisions criminalising contract cheating several years ago, TEQSA has continued to take further action concerning contract and academic cheating.
In March 2022, TEQSA Chief Commissioner Professor Peter Coaldrake AO wrote to all Australian higher education providers encouraging continued action to guard against commercial academic cheating services. Professor Coaldrake highlighted that TEQSA's Higher Education Integrity Unit had a variety of successes in 2021 in obtaining injunctions and had also commenced intelligence-gathering investigations into suspect websites. The letter also highlighted that social media platforms such as Meta (the owners of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp), LinkedIn and Gumtree had all removed a collective number of over 300 posts that promote commercial academic cheating services. However, Professor Coaldrake stressed that whilst TEQSA had experienced a level of success, providers should also act by ensuring that academic integrity policies are current and regularly communicated to staff and students.
In early 2022, in response to evidence received by TEQSA that commercial academic cheating providers had been advertising their services at Australian higher education campuses, TEQSA published and provided a suite of downloadable materials including posters and videos, intended to support providers to strengthen academic integrity at Australian higher education institutions.
TEQSA has also undertaken a social media campaign across its Facebook page to raise awareness that promoting or selling academic cheating services is illegal. The campaign allowed TEQSA to engage with students directly.
TEQSA also introduced a 'Protecting academic integrity' webpage which includes a variety of resources available to providers, including an academic integrity toolkit, a hub containing experts advice and a variety of other resources.
Most recently, TEQSA launched its Lawful disruption of access to online services policy on 5 August 2022. The policy records the approach to be taken by TEQSA to block access to commercial academic cheating sites. The policy was launched in conjunction with an announcement from the Minister of Education that TEQSA had worked with the Communications Alliance to develop new protocols to facilitate this process under the Telecommunications Act 1997 (Cth). Since implementing the policy, TEQSA has disrupted access to 152 websites, the most recent of which were announced in a press release by TEQSA on 13 October 2022.
The new policy and protocol provides a streamlined and efficient process for TEQSA to disrupt commercial academic cheating sites. Ultimately, we expect this policy and protocol to be used more regularly by TEQSA than the provisions under the TEQSA Act. The Act empowers TEQSA to apply to the Federal Court for orders requiring carriage service providers to disable access to online locations that facilitate violations of the contract cheating reforms introduced into the TEQSA Act by the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency Amendment (Prohibiting Academic Cheating Services) Bill 2019 (Cth).
When reporting on the Federal Court's decision in the first such application brought by TEQSA in 2021, we noted that the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) had moved to this more streamlined process in 2019. Since that time, ACMA has made over 200 site blocking requests concerning illegal gambling websites. It appears that TEQSA intends to follow ACMA's lead through introduction and implementation of the new policy and protocol and the Minister's announcement.
Legislative and policy changes
TEQSA Act and Threshold Standards
Since the Higher Education Standards Framework (Threshold Standards) 2015 was repealed and replaced by the Higher Education Standards Framework (Threshold Standards) 2021, which came into effect on 1 July 2021, there have been no major amendments to the TEQSA Act or Threshold Standards. However, we still await the commencement of the new cost recovery mechanisms introduced in 2021.
In particular, as covered in our 2018 TEQSA Update, the 2018-19 Commonwealth Budget included an announcement that TEQSA's funding would change from the then current partial cost recovery arrangement to the progressive achievement of full cost recovery arrangements. This was to be done by introducing a new higher education provider charge.
Following several delays by the Australian Government, the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (Charges) Act 2021 (Charges Act) was introduced to Parliament, received royal assent on 13 August 2021, and was due to come into effect on 1 January 2022. Following further delays, the cost recovery arrangements will commence on 1 January 2023 as follows:
- 20% of costs to be recovered from 1 January 2023;
- 50% of costs to be recovered from 1 January 2024; and
- 100% of costs to be recovered from 1 January 2025.
According to the explanatory memorandum for the Charges Act, the higher education provider charge established by the Act is designed to recover the costs of TEQSA's sector risk monitoring and other regulatory oversight activities, which are not covered by application-based fees and do not currently attract a charge. It will, however, provide significant additional costs for providers in the sector.
Register Guidelines
TEQSA has released a consultation paper on proposed amendments to the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (Register) Guidelines 2017 (Register Guidelines), which is a legislative instrument that sets out the information that TEQSA must enter on the national register in respect of each provider.
The consultation paper records that TEQSA proposes to amend the Register Guidelines so that TEQSA will make entries on the national register to include:
- information regarding decisions it makes about providers under the Education Services for Overseas Students Act 2000 (ESOS Act), including decisions to: renew a provider’s registration for a period less than 7 years; impose, vary, or remove conditions on the registration; refuse to renew a provider’s registration; or impose sanctions on the provider for non-compliance; and
- information regarding the relevant legislative provisions which were the subject of findings that informed TEQSA’s decisions under either the TEQSA Act or the ESOS Act.
New policies
TEQSA has published / updated the following policies in the last 12 months:
Guidance notes
In May 2022, TEQSA announced the commencement of a project to enhance its suite of guidance notes for providers. In line with this project, TEQSA has published updated guidance notes relating to the Threshold Standards, including in relation to:
Besides the above Guidance Notes on the Threshold Standards, TEQSA also published the below guidance and reports that may be of interest to providers:
If you would like further information or advice on how these TEQSA regulatory changes and developments affects your institution, please reach out to a member of our national higher education team.
