Doing University Governance: From Crisis to Community (Roundtable)

Abstract

The governance crisis in Australian higher education has produced a wave of institutional responses: the NTEU's "Ending Bad Governance" campaign, a Senate inquiry that found university governing bodies hollowed out by corporatisation and diminished staff and student representation, and new federal governance standards. While these interventions matter, they largely treat governance issues as solvable via the imposition of better rules, stronger oversight, clearer standards on the university community from outside or above. This roundtable asks a different question: what would it mean to govern the university as a democratic community, rather than merely regulate it as a corporate one? Ideas of participatory and deliberative democracy hold that legitimate governance depends not just on formal representation but on the ongoing capacity of a community to deliberate, to be heard, and to shape the decisions that affect it. Applied to the university, this reframes staff, students and alumni not as "stakeholders" to be consulted after the fact, but as a constituency with a standing claim to participate in how the institution is run — and whose sense of belonging to that institution depends on genuinely being listened to. The ANU Governance Project and UTS Governance Project are attempts to put this into practice. Both are independent, community-led initiatives that have used surveys, "kitchen table conversations" and deliberative workshops to draw on staff, student and community members’ experiences of university governance and build reform proposals with the people the university is meant to serve. In June 2026 the two projects co-hosted the inaugural University Governance National Forum in Canberra, the first independent, community-led national gathering on university governance reform, bringing university communities together with parliamentarians, union leaders, regulators and government officials to deliberate on implementable reform — including options such as legislative reforms, council redesign, enhanced transparency standards, and stronger accountability mechanisms. This roundtable builds on that forum, bringing ANU and UTS Governance Project participants together with colleagues from other universities exploring similar issues and initiatives. Discussion will reflect on the progress and prospects of the governance project model for governance reform, and consider what these projects suggest about how to “do” university governance, including putting governance principles into practice meaningfully, the importance of friction for effective governance, and the relationships between deliberative legitimacy, institutional trust and community participation.

Title	Details
Reflections on the progress and potential of governance projects	View Paper Details
The ANU Governance Project: Insights into Governance Reform 1	View Paper Details
The ANU Governance Project: Insights into Governance Reform 2	View Paper Details
Governance Projects from Crisis to Community	View Paper Details