VET News

Budget Measures Set to Boost TEQSA’s Monitoring and Assurance Activities

The 2018-19 Budget has announced an addition of $24.3 million over four years to TEQSA and says this will deliver significant benefits to the higher education sector by allowing the agency to further its quality assurance of all higher education providers.

The additional funding will come, in part, from aligning TEQSA’s cost recovery activity and charging model with wider government policy.

TEQSA’s current partial cost recovery arrangements, considered appropriate during its formative years, will be progressively amended to full cost recovery arrangements over a four-year period, in line with the Australian Government’s Charging Framework.

TEQSA CEO Anthony McClaran said that the changes would strengthen the agency’s oversight of Australian higher education and significantly boost capacity to undertake monitoring, investigation and compliance activities where quality is a cause for concern.

“Also announced in the Budget is $3.1million to allow TEQSA to undertake a national role tackling the increasingly complex issue of contract cheating and academic integrity in higher education”, said Mr McClaran.

“The additional funding and revised cost recovery arrangements will ensure TEQSA is properly equipped to deal with emerging issues, and able to fulfil its purpose of protecting and enhancing Australia’s reputation for quality higher education”.

The additional funding will also allow TEQSA to more effectively manage regulatory activities, which have been affected in recent times by a marked increase in the number of registration applications from prospective higher education providers.

Stakeholders will be invited to comment on a draft Cost Recovery Implementation Statement in the coming weeks.

For more information, you can view the:

• Original TEQSA announcement
• Budget website
• Department of Education and Training's Portfolio Budget Statement
• Australian Government Charging Framework webpage on the Department of Finance website

Date posted May 17, 2018