By Sarah McCrea
With everything that’s going on at the ANU, sometimes it can be easy to miss the bigger picture. Observer zooms out of the campus bubble, summarising the key news pieces in higher education this year.
ATEC Permanently Established
The Australian Tertiary Education Commission (ATEC) is a steward for higher education. It works to achieve “a better and fairer tertiary education system that delivers for students and on national economic and social objectives”. A main goal of ATEC is to increase “tertiary education attainment to 80 per cent of working aged people by 2050”, which includes university and vocational courses.
Recommended in 2022 by the Australian Universities Accord, the commission only began interim operations in mid-2025 as part of the government’s 2024-2025 Budget. On 31 March 2026, the legislation required to permanently establish ATEC passed Parliament. On 29 April 2026, ATEC was formally established.
When ATEC was permanently established in March, Minister for Education, Jason Clare called it “real long-term systemic reform”.
“Instead of the hunger games we have at the moment where universities are encouraged to be the same size and eat each other alive for students, the ATEC will help us build something different.”
Minister for Skills and Training, Andrew Giles stated, “For the wider community, this means our tertiary education sector can be more responsive to the evolving needs of the workforce – so we have the right skills for the jobs of today and tomorrow”.
New Senate Action in Response to the ‘Job-Ready Graduates’ Package
The ‘Job-Ready Graduates’ Package, which came into force at the start of 2024, increased tuition fees for university courses in the arts and humanities. It reduced fees in science and education degrees, which the Morrison government described as “areas of national priority”.
A few years on, demand for arts and humanities courses has seen little change, but the debt that students have incurred from these degrees has only risen, reducing the ability of students from low-income backgrounds to attend university.
The Higher Education Support Amendment (Reverse Job-Ready Graduates Fee Hikes and End 50k Arts Degrees) Bill 2025 is a proposed piece of legislation introduced by Senator Fahruqi in November last year. Aiming to “repeal the Job-ready graduates’ fee hikes” made under the Job-ready Graduates package, it was proclaimed that the bill “will end $50,000 Arts degrees”. It is also intended to “return the maximum student contribution amounts for places in most affected units of study to their cost prior to the 2020 fee hikes”.
In late April, 2026, Universities Australia CEO Luke Sheehy declared, “Everyone agrees Job-ready Graduates has failed”. But he also opposes the legislation proposed in the Senate, saying it “cuts student fees on one hand and quietly cuts funding on the other”. According to Sheehy, in the end “students pick up the bill”, whether financially or otherwise.
Senate Inquiry on University Graduates
Last year’s Senate Inquiry into ‘Quality of governance at Australian higher education providers’ led to controversy and change in the higher education sector, including at the ANU. This year, another Senate Inquiry into Australian universities has begun. In late March, the Education and Employment Committee in the Senate initiated an inquiry into ‘Australian university graduates’.
The terms of reference show the inquiry will be looking into graduates’ struggle to find work, particularly the entry-level job market, “whether graduates of Australian universities are being taught the skills that employers are looking for”, and “the economic, social and psychological effect that this experience has on graduates”. Submissions close in June, with the report to be released in late November this year.
Calls for a Vice-Chancellor Pay Cap
Calls for a pay cap to be introduced for Vice-Chancellors increased. A Senate Inquiry report recommended the cap, along with think-tanks and community groups. Senator Jacqui Lambie introduced a bill which would cap Vice-Chancellor salaries at $430,000. This bill, Tertiary Education Legislation Amendment (There For Education, Not Profit) Bill 2025, called current Vice-Chancellor salaries “excessive remuneration”. Senator Lambie added the bill was also about changing the operations of bureaucracy in universities.
“Over the past four decades, we have seen our universities transformed, from the nation-building institutions they once were, into voracious corporate entities,” she said.” She commented they were “measuring their success in terms of international student numbers, grand campus building programs, and extravagant pay and perks for their top executives”.
The Education and Employment Committee recommended that the bill not be passed by the Senate. It was claimed to not be the “appropriate mechanism for addressing the issue”.
The Rise of AI in Australian Universities
The use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) at university has been a hot topic this year. The Australian feared AI will “destroy” higher education and claimed high proportions of students use AI to cheat in their exams. The ABC wondered how universities can “catch up” with the technology at a time when AI is replacing graduates in the job market. Speculation is at an all-time high.
La Trobe University has taken a unique approach to “catching up”, appointing an executive in charge of managing AI at the university. The new executive role, Pro Vice-Chancellor (Artificial Intelligence), is responsible for overseeing the university’s ‘Responsible AI Adoption Strategy’. According to La Trobe, this “cements the University’s ambition to become an AI-first university”.
The La Trobe Vice-Chancellor commented, “We are transforming into an AI-first university so we can ensure our graduates are ready for employment in a world that is being reshaped by AI”.
What’s Next?
With the ANU still impacted by these events, and as higher education news continues to unfold throughout the year, Observer’s keeping an eye on this for you.
More to come.
Know something we don’t know? Email news@anuobserver.org.
If you have an issue with this article, or a correction to make, you can contact us at news@anuobserver.org or angry react the Facebook post.
If you don’t have an issue with this article and want to hear more from us, we’re in the process of making a newsletter! Sign up here, and have the latest news delivered directly to you.
ANU Observer 