Regulating the University: Examining the Regulatory Framework of Australian University

Abstract

The regulatory framework for the Australian university has brought about a radical transformation of the Australian university. The changes to the framework shifted the burden for resourcing from government to students and introduced a wide variety of competition based regulatory instruments. The Australian university has been successful in generating these resources, primarily from selling education to international students and has become a world-leader in the export of higher education. However, the other effects of the regulatory changes have been less positive. The thesis seeks to evaluate the regulatory change from the perspective of regulatory coherence. That is, rather than political or economic evaluations, the thesis examines the regulation from a legal, mechanical perspective.

The changes to the regulation reflect a broader societal shift from the welfare state to the regulatory state. For regulation to be successful it must be coherent within itself including taking adequate account of the extant institutions and social arrangements. This thesis provides a coherence analysis of the regulation. It is composed of eight chapters. After the introductory chapter, the thesis commences with a chapter reviewing regulatory theory and developing a theory of regulatory coherence. This theory is a new theory which facilitates a focus on the mechanical aspects of the regulation. The next chapter develops the analysis by examining the regulatory framework. This part of the thesis provides detailed analysis of the regulation, in particular, its instruments and accountability structures. It then turns in Chapter 4 to examine the policy-regulatory questions of public versus private providing a basis for evaluation of coherence. Next it turns in Chapters 5 and 6 to an examination of the institution of the university and its corporate organisational form. To capture the complexity of the university, the thesis takes an interdisciplinary view of the phenomenon. The penultimate chapter then provides an evaluation of the regulatory framework as against theory of regulatory coherence. The concluding chapter of the thesis reiterates the finding that fundamental incoherence impairs the well functioning of the institution and its organisations.