Australia’s soon-to-be-established higher education “steward” will inherit not only the massive reform agenda it was created for but also the changes its architect overlooked, according to its progenitor.

Mary O’Kane, who heads the interim Australian Tertiary Education Commission (Atec), plans to hand over an imposing to-do list when she passes the baton to the chief commissioner of the permanently constituted agency.

The “briefing documents” will include not only the 400-page final report from the Australian Universities Accord, which O’Kane chaired, but also the things “we didn’t do”.

Delivering the annual Bradley Oration at the University of Sydney, O’Kane offered a frank appraisal of her own review. “The accord didn’t go far enough,” she said.

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“Topics we worked on to varying degrees [have] become more urgent since the accord…or they weren’t directly in the terms of reference and we didn’t have the resources or time to address them adequately, [or] we sensed the pushback was too strong.”

They include technological change, artificial intelligence, online provision, workforce issues, cross-subsidies, infrastructure and the mooted Australian regional university – a University of California-style confederation of rurally based Australian institutions that “retain their name and…distinctive local presence” while sharing many functions.

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“To us, it seemed like a winner,” O’Kane said. “But it was strongly opposed by…regional universities and in the end, we backed off. The great lesson you learn as a reviewer is that opposition to one single recommendation can lead to the whole review being buried.”

Other unfinished business from the accord includes questions around universities’ size, their diversity, their “fierce competitiveness” and their choice over teaching and research fields, O’Kane said.

She said the commission would assume a workload of “core activities with an associated agenda of challenges”, some with “reasonably developed solutions” from the accord and “others needing further work”. “Hopefully, Atec will get to tick off a lot of things…but sometimes extra heft might be needed and there will be need for another review.”

The remarks could alarm some in the sector who feel the commission already has too much heft, and a proposal to house it within the Department of Education means it will lack independence.

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Education minister Jason Clare has revealed that Atec will take over responsibility for the Higher Education Standards Framework, which outlines the performance measures institutions must meet to be registered, from the independent panel that currently sets the standards.

Legislation to formally create Atec will be introduced into parliament next week, Clare said.

In the meantime, the interim Atec is pushing ahead on “possibly the most important” piece of unfinished business from the accord, O’Kane said. A working party headed by renowned health economist Stephen Duckett is investigating costing and pricing issues in universities, taking over from previous attempts that were “buried” or “incomplete”.

O’Kane said its efforts would be vital in underpinning reforms such as the dismantling of the unpopular Job-ready Graduates (JRG) scheme.

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“Without knowing the true or reasonable costs of…carrying out university activities, we can’t determine what is optimal support for people. We can’t provide a price for the commonwealth contribution to a student place with any confidence. And we can’t disentangle cost subsidies, let alone tackle JRG.”

john.ross@timeshighereducation.com