Australia’s university funding overhaul is bogged down in parliament’s upper house, after the opposition introduced a raft of amendments to the “Opening the Doors of Opportunity” bill.
Amendments to be moved by a Liberal Party senator would remove the education minister’s powers to impose conditions on universities’ teaching grants, while institutions would no longer face penalties for inadvertently exceeding their domestic enrolment quotas by improving their retention rates.
The amendments would also require the Australian Tertiary Education Commission (Atec) to publish the criteria it uses to determine each university’s quota. Atec would also be obliged to consult independent colleges on the allocation of places for international students.
The opposition motions would also revive shadow education minister Julian Leeser’s efforts to embellish the “National Tertiary Education Objective” in the Atec Act, so that it mentions factors including research, teaching, learning, scholarship and student experience.
Most controversially, Liberal senator Matt O’Sullivan will introduce a suite of amendments effectively obliging universities to adopt the contentious International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism.
