Australia’s universities are already carrying too much government baggage, and the new tertiary education commission should not make it worse, the head of Universities Australia said in Adelaide on May 21.

Luke Sheehy told the Australian Higher Education Industrial Association conference that universities were facing an unprecedented compliance burden, with some institutions required to meet as many as 300 separate legislative, regulatory and reporting obligations. He said the sector had seen a dramatic escalation in regulatory burden, political scrutiny and government intervention over the past few years.

Sheehy said the pressure now reaches into almost every part of public life and lands on the desk of a university vice-chancellor. Migration, housing, foreign policy, social cohesion, AI, campus culture, student safety and mental health are all being pushed into the university system, he said, while each new issue brings another review, reporting process, framework, assurance mechanism, ministerial direction or regulator.

“Every hour spent feeding those systems is an hour not spent on teaching, research or supporting students,” he said, arguing that the sector is entering a new era of higher education policy defined by stewardship, intervention, oversight and increasingly regulation.

The warning came only weeks after legislation formally established the Australian Tertiary Education Commission, or ATEC, a body created from the Universities Accord recommendation and tasked with long-term stewardship of the tertiary education system. The commission is set to help oversee funding arrangements, mission-based compacts and efforts to strengthen pathways between higher education and vocational training.

Universities Australia backed the creation of ATEC and pushed hard to strengthen it, but Sheehy said the sector does not need another layer of administration. “The sector does not need another body adding duplication, reporting obligations and administrative burden,” he said. “It needs a body capable of simplifying the system, reducing overlap, driving better co-ordination between agencies and helping lift higher education out of the political cycle and into a more stable, long-term national framework.”

He said ATEC should act as a steward of the system, not a controller of institutions. “Universities are not departments of state,” he said. “They are independent institutions… with their own missions, expertise and statutory responsibilities. That independence matters.”

The friction in his message is plain: the government has just created the commission it says will bring stability, while the university sector is warning that more visibility can quickly turn into more control. Sheehy said the new model is already more interventionist, with government seeking greater influence and leverage over how universities operate. “Once autonomy is eroded, it’s very difficult to get it back,” he said, adding that stewardship cannot become central planning and coordination cannot become regulatory overreach.

For universities, the question now is not whether ATEC exists, but whether it becomes the kind of system-level steward Sheehy described or another layer in the compliance machinery that already takes time away from students and classrooms.