Labor’s Universities Accord promises “a visionary plan for Australia’s universities” when it releases its final report in December. But don’t hold your breath for it to deliver anything much for students and university staff.

The accord, commissioned by Education Minister Jason Clare, is a comprehensive review of higher education that brings together government, universities and big business. The review, which is currently taking submissions, will also consult with the National Union of Students. 

“For the first time”, claims last year’s NUS President Georgie Beatty, “students have the opportunity to not only respond to change in the tertiary sector, but to help drive it”.

Unfortunately, Beatty has been drinking the Kool-Aid. There are many problems in universities, including course cuts in the humanities and social sciences, wage theft and extreme levels of staff casualisation, the exploitation of international students and a general deterioration of the student experience. 

But the purpose of the accord isn’t to improve student or staff conditions. It’s about reshaping higher education in the interests of big business. 

The review is being conducted by a panel of six bosses and politicians led by former Adelaide University Vice-Chancellor Mary O’Kane. The team includes Shemara Wikramanayake, CEO of Macquarie Group, a global financial services company that posted profits of $4.7 billion last year. Meanwhile, big business associations such as the Business Council of Australia sit on the Ministerial Reference Group advising the panel. 

It’s no surprise that capitalists are prominent figures in the review. Its terms of reference, released last year, focus on business interests. Clare’s stated top priority is making sure universities meet “Australia’s knowledge and skills needs, now and in the future”. The accord also aims to “boost collaboration between universities and industry to drive greater commercial returns”. 

So it’s not about educating generations of critical thinkers well versed in history. It’s all about creating the sort of workforce that bosses can best exploit to create wealth. The “collaboration” is not between educators and students for the betterment of society, but between capitalist institutions to direct research into economically profitable areas. In Australia, that increasingly means destructive industries such as military research.

Clare wants “to build a broad consensus” by involving universities in this review—in contrast to the Liberals, who, when in government federally, excluded universities from the JobKeeper scheme and cut government funding through the Job-Ready Graduates package. 

Under the Job-Ready Graduates funding model, students have been forced to contribute more towards their degrees than the government. The model also tried to increase the number of students in courses that would address labour shortages, such as nursing. It did this by making priority courses cheaper, while more than doubling the fees for humanities degrees. 

According to Andrew Norton, a higher education policy researcher at the Australian National University, the scheme not only failed to increase the number of “job-ready” graduates, but also burdened students with increased debt. 

Reviewing the Job-Ready Graduates scheme is one objective of the accord. This does not mean, however, that the review has students in mind—let alone that we will somehow be in a position to “drive” change, as Georgie Beatty argues.

University bosses are conducting the review. They have interests that are at odds with staff and students. Take Barney Glover, vice-chancellor of Western Sydney University. Last year he made $905,000 while his staff were forced to take a real pay cut. He’s a panellist for the review.

Or consider that university managements stole an estimated $83 million in wages nationally over the last three years, according to the National Tertiary Education Union, while many vice-chancellors make salaries over a million dollars. 

Staff working environments are students’ learning environments. When staff suffer, we suffer. So the vice-chancellors cannot be trusted to do what’s best for students. 

Even if the government increases total university funding, it won’t guarantee lower fees or a better education. In 2021, universities made a record $53 billion in profits—but that didn’t stop them cutting courses and hundreds of jobs.

Yet the dominant position in the National Union of Students, according to its submission to the review, is support for the accord’s panellists, provided that they “embed the voice of students in all the decisions they make”. Both of the ALP-aligned student factions have proposed joining the accord on similar grounds. 

NUS’s submission does contain supportable demands such as free education and raising welfare payments to at least $88 per day. But participation in the accord won’t bring them any closer. 

There are two opposing sets of interests in the higher education sector. On one side are the capitalists and vice-chancellors, whose goal is to increase revenues and profits. On the other side are students and staff, whose demands for lower fees and higher wages are directly at odds with the wants of the university managers. No amount of consensus-building can reconcile these interests—for one to gain, the other has to lose.

In the Universities Accord, the capitalists and vice-chancellors have the main advantage: the government wants to please them more than anyone. Student representatives, meanwhile, have no bargaining power in those discussion; they’ll most likely be ignored. Worse, if the particular students attending happen to agree with the vice-chancellors, they will provide “consultative” cover for the increasing corporatisation of higher education.

Further, the Labor government itself cannot be trusted. Labor abolished free education in the 1980s and introduced the HECS system, which is saddling graduates with mountains of debt as fees increase. And Labor is refusing to increase JobSeeker or Youth Allowance above the poverty line.

The National Union of Students joining the accord will only create the illusion that Labor is on our side. If students are to have a voice, it will come only through rebuilding the student movement as a collective voice heard through mass protest.

That’s why I’m not wasting time writing a submission to the accord, or trying to join the Ministerial Reference Group. Instead, I’m organising student protests against fossil fuel corporations, profiteering landlords and the Labor government that helps them screw over students and the oppressed. 

The rest of NUS should do likewise—stand up for students, rather than cosy up to the vice-chancellors, the capitalists and the government.