Full version of Issues Paper
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The then Minister for Education, Science and Training released an Issues Paper in March 2005 as first step in a consultation process on future approval and accreditation arrangements in the higher education sector.
The Issues Paper considered the changed environment of our current approval and accreditation processes and also set out a range of issues including:
- the specific combinations of teaching, scholarship and research which should define universities and other types of higher education institutions;
- whether there should be provision for ‘specialist’ institutions covering a narrow field of study in-depth rather than a wide range of disciplines;
- the role of private and for-profit institutions in the future and to what extent regulation of them should be different to regulation of public or not-for profit institutions;
- the scope to create pathways for non self-accrediting institutions to progress to self-accrediting or university status over time if desired; and
- the potential impacts of changing the current framework.
Following on from the recommendations made in 2004 by Professor Gus Guthrie in Further Development of the National Protocols for Higher Education Approval Processes, and the release of the Issues Paper Building University Diversity, including submissions received, a National Workshop was held in Melbourne on 17 August 2005.
The workshop was run under the auspices of the Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs (MCEETYA), and was convened in order to provide stakeholders with a further opportunity to discuss Australia’s future accreditation and approval processes for higher education in the lead up to MCEETYA’s higher education meeting in November 2005.
An issues paper prepared by Professor Geoff Wilson, AM was circulated before the workshop. The workshop was attended by over 100 key stakeholders, and a report on the outcomes of the workshop informed deliberations of the Joint Committee for Higher Education, which then recommended changes to MCEETYA.