The Australian Government is establishing a new national regulatory and quality agency for higher education, the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA). TEQSA will be established this year as an independent body with powers to regulate university and non-university higher education providers, monitor quality and set standards. Its primary task will be to ensure that students receive a high quality education at any of our higher education providers. TEQSA will register providers, carry out evaluations of standards and performance, protect and assure the quality of international education and streamline current regulatory arrangements. It will join together the regulatory activity currently undertaken in the states and territories with the quality assurance activities currently undertaken by the Australian Universities Quality Agency.
TEQSA is will be one element of the new regulatory and quality arrangements:
- the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA),
- a new National Register of Higher Education Providers,
- a new Higher Education Standards Framework, and
- the My University website.
Download the new regulatory and quality arrangements diagram:
TEQSA is a key initiative of the Government’s reform agenda for higher education, Transforming Australia’s Higher Education System, which will transform the scale, potential and quality of the nation’s universities and open the doors to higher education to a new generation of Australians.
New national regulatory arrangements are also being introduced in the VET sector. TEQSA and the new National VET Regulator are being established in the context of a potential merger in 2013, in order to achieve a more interconnected tertiary sector.