June 15, 2025 • 13 mins
A quiet transformation is underway at Australian universities. Behind closed doors, powerful consulting firms are helping to reshape higher education; cutting courses, centralising power, and outsourcing staff.
One firm in particular, Nous Group, is now embedded in some of the country’s most prestigious institutions. At the Australian National University, its role in a $250 million restructure has been concealed, even from parliament, raising serious concerns about transparency and accountability.
Today, senior reporter for The Saturday Paper, Rick Morton, on how consultants gained control of the university sector, and what it could mean for the future of higher education.
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Guest: Senior reporter for The Saturday Paper, Rick Morton.
Photo: University of Sydney
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
From Schwartz Media. I'm Daniel James. This is seven AM.
A quiet transformation is underway at Australian universities. Behind closed doors,
powerful consulting firms are helping to reshape higher education, cutting courses,
centralizing power and outsourcing staff. One firm in particular, Nouscroup,
(00:26):
is now embedded in some of the country's most prestigious institutions.
At the Australian National University, its role in a two
hundred and fifty million dollars restructure has been concealed even
from Parliament, raising concerns about transparency and accountability. Today, senior
reporter for the Saturday Paper, Rick Morton on how consultants
gain control of the university sector and what it could
(00:48):
mean for the future of higher education. It's Monday, June sixteenth, Rick.
Universities as a sector have been sounding the alarm for
a long time. The government policy, including funding counts and
student caps, has been having a big impact on their
(01:11):
ability to function. So can you give me some examples
of how consultants fit into that. How are universities using them?
Speaker 2 (01:17):
So consultants appear to be coming in and great example
of that is one I covered recently at a University
of Technology Sydney where KPMG were brought in. But we're
essentially told go and look at individual research output from
individual researchers and produce a master list of those who
are not contributing enough profit to the university, which, as
(01:39):
it was put to me, would probably contravene the enterprise
bargaining agreement at that university because you can't you could
performance manage someone for not meeting expectations. You can't make
redundancies based on performance. That's not how this is meant
to work. And so the consultants, of course took a
particular corporate view across the board. They're looking at profit
and loss, they're looking at ways to rationalize centralized services.
(02:01):
But the actual structure of the university is incredibly special
for a reason. It's meant to be a kind of
a distributed network of knowledge centers, faculties, people who are
learned in their field, who contribute to the life of
the university and who are cooperative in the way that
(02:23):
university is run. And increasingly, particularly with consultants like the
NOUS group, which is one that will come to in
quite a bit of detail, the advice is centralize all
of your functions and to the degree possible handicap what
it is the faculties and the academic staff are able
to do and the say they have over the future
of this institution, which would make it a lot more
(02:44):
like a corporation and a lot less like a university.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
Now, there are a number of consultancy groups involved in
all of this, but you did mention Nowscroup, which is
a global consulting firm and they do a lot of
work with the Australian National University. So what did you
find out of the role they are playing there? Now?
Speaker 2 (03:02):
This is fascinating and I particularly there it in on
them because I think they've had the most astounding growth
off the back of their participation in higher education advisory services.
And of course this story was first being told through
the Austrained Financial Review of former colleague of mine, Julie
Her who's a fantastic reporter, was looking at misgivings, I
guess is one way of saying it. Early on within
(03:23):
the tenure of the new vice chancellor there, Professor Genevieve
Bell and her chancellor, Julie Bishop. Now Genevieve Bell had
announces his kind of two hundred and fifty million dollar
restructure at the A and U because they said that
they were running out of money structurally and they were
going to be six hundred to something job losses. But
what they didn't do is tell anyone that they were
(03:43):
using the Nouse Group's advice or paying them for that advice.
In fact, they were incredibly tricky with how they disclosed
any mention at all that they were using external consultants
to advise on this enormous restructure.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
How wisepread is the use of consultants across the Australian
university sector. I mean they're everywhere.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
They are literally everywhere. I mean KPMG was paid eight
and a half million dollars for business advisory, which is
consulting at the University of Melbourne. Deloitte was another one
and a half grooth of the university has paid now
I think it was almost two and a half million
over the last sixteen months. And then lots of boutique
(04:24):
ones that are even like a tier below now. So
they're absolutely everywhere. And the irony is that universities themselves
offered have their own consulting output, but they won't use
them because they're worried to push back from staff and
letting their plans kind of leak out into the public.
The way the system has been built up, there's so
much money sloshing around that to the extent that a
(04:48):
firm wants to give you the tough advice, they're only
prepared to do so if they think they can still
keep getting work. I mean, that's just the sad reality
is that you're not necessarily going to be told anything
you don't want to hear.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
Coming up after the break, David Pocock takes on unibosses Rick.
Late last year, the A and you were brought in
front of Center Estimates to ask about the restructures you
mentioned earlier, and David Pocock was trying to get to
the bottom of how much the UNI had paid now
(05:23):
Scroup for the very structure. Thank you, Thank you cha.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
Just finally, is it correct that you've engaged in our
scroup and what what work are they doing? Is it
related to finding savings or what's the scope of that work.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
There was one example where the chief Operating Office that
Jonathan Churchill was asked how much is this contract worth? Yeah,
thank you, senator, We have paid now sort of the
fifty thousand dollars so far this year, okay.
Speaker 3 (05:51):
Seven fifteen, fifty fifty Okay, yeah, you're not.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
With now that's the question, very easy to understand. How
much was this tract worth? And what he said was
we have paid to date fifty thousand dollars to NAS.
That wasn't the question, and there also wasn't correct as
a standalone answer. And if he had been asked how
much he'd been paid, because the invoices at that point
were about four hundred and fifty thousand dollars to NUS.
(06:17):
Now we now know when he asked this question on
November seven last year, that a contract for NOUS had
been signed and set in motion a month before, and
that that contract was worth eight hundred and thirty seven
thousand dollars. Genevieve Bell was also asked have you used
NOUS to advise on the restructure, and the answer she
(06:39):
gave was, I would argue deliberately obtuse.
Speaker 4 (06:43):
I initially engaged the NOWS group a number of months ago, Senator,
to help think about how to look at the role
and the changing role of universities in a global landscape.
I was interested in what were the ways that universities
thoughttrategically and what was a global survey really.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
And what she said was I brought them in early
on in my tenure when I got the VC job
to advise on the university's position in relation to other
universities and how we're tracking. Now that makes it sound
like that's not involved in the restructure.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
That's not true.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
And of course we now know subsequent to that fact
that within seventeen days of the Vice Chancellor starting the job,
she had authorized the pursuit of these consulting firms for
enormous restructure at the A ANDU. When it was subsequently
emerged that David Pocock had been misled, he was furious
(07:40):
and he put out a statement in April this year
essentially saying that he was appalling and that he takes
this incredibly seriously. And the conclusion he reached was that
he had been misled by these officials because they didn't
want to answer the question. And of course after that
there were also a bunch of questions on notice, which
(08:02):
through the Parliamentary Estimate system, you can take a question
on notice, you can take it away, you can use
all your resources at your institution, your department, whatever it is,
and answer the question properly and come back and tell
the Senate the truth. And it is an offense to
mislead the Senate. There were several questions on notice that
printed outright mistruths about the use of Nouw's consulting and
(08:27):
about the value of those contracts. They had to be
recalled and corrected. The question that remains is how did
that happen? Who's signed off on those questions on notice responses?
The fact that there has been a pattern of behavior
here now has led people to ask even more questions
that they might have otherwise been happy to accept the
(08:49):
answers to, which is, what are your motives behind this restructure?
Why are you paying nows? And what are you doing
with the advice that you're refusing to tell us about.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
A lot of secrecy and uncertainty around all this. But
what we do know is that universities are spending a
lot on consultants, which begs the question shouldn't university management,
people like the vice chancellor and the people on the
University council have a sense of how to make savings
or where to spend money, or how to structure their business.
(09:21):
I mean, isn't that their job?
Speaker 2 (09:22):
Yeah, that is their job and they should do it.
We have a fundamental structural problem with universities and to
some extent they won't be financially sustainable, while the government
that funds and regulates them doesn't seem to care about
their role in society. But vcs are paid, you know,
somebody around a million dollars on average in Australia to
(09:44):
do these jobs because we're told they demand an incredibly
astute and sensitive skill set, which is to manage the
academic output and the rankings and the quality of the
institution with the business of running such a large organization.
But university councils have even fewer oversight mechanisms than a
(10:08):
corporate board. There are no shareholders to whom they're accountable.
There is no publicly listed ASX meeting for these council members.
The VC, particularly at university the Australian National University, the
VC can only lose their job if they resign or
if the council recinds it.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
So, Rick, what impact do you think all this will
have on the university sector. The reliance on consultancy firms,
the lack of funding from federal government to universities. What
does the future of the university sector look like At
the moment.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
It's pretty grim, and you know, staff are already overworked
and overburdened, particularly academic and professional staff, trying to just
keep the wheels turning on these places that have been gutted.
And you know, they tend to get gutted every other
four years. You know, there's always a restructure happening at
a university at any given point in time. And of
course university vcs didn't want to make these decisions on
(11:04):
their own because they're so much political blowback within the organization,
so they get these consultants in. But of course now
over I'm very cranky that they're using these consultants. So
you've got Griffith University now just hiring the consultants as
full time employees. You know, someone told me to look
at the Vice Chancellor's office at Griffith and there's two
employees there who were hired directly from NAUS who are
(11:25):
principal consultants who are now directing transformation within the Vice
Chancellor's office. So it's pretty grim. I mean, what does
it look like in the future we just keep cutting.
And now somemselves are quite explicit in their report where
they interviewed the chief operating officers. They literally said that
the academy's up for grabs. That's how they phrased it's
up for graps, which tells you everything you need to know.
(11:46):
I think about the way that they.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
See this, Rick, thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
Thanks mate, I appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
Also in the news today, Prime Minister Anthony Alberinezi has
confirmed he'll meet face to face with Donald Trump this
week in a high stakes diplomatic encounter on the sidelines
of the g seventh Summit in Canada. The meeting comes
amid escalating tensions in the Middle East and growing uncertainty
over the Orcas submarine deal, which the Pentagon is now reviewing.
Albanzi says he'll use the meeting to press Australia's case
(12:29):
for a tariff exemption and to highlight the strategic benefits
of Orcas for the US and Israel has launched a
series of strikes on Iran's energy infrastructure, targeting a major
oil refinery in Tehran and a gas facility in the
country's largest production field. The attacks have sent crude oil
prices sharply higher and raised fears of a sustained spike
(12:52):
and fuel costs. Analysts warned that any further escalation, particularly
in the Strait of Hamas, could destabilize global energy markets.
This is being seven am. We'll be back tomorrow. Thanks
for listening.
From Schwartz Media. I'm Daniel James. This is seven AM.
A quiet transformation is underway at Australian universities. Behind closed doors,
powerful consulting firms are helping to reshape higher education, cutting courses,
centralizing power and outsourcing staff. One firm in particular, Nouscroup,
(00:26):
is now embedded in some of the country's most prestigious institutions.
At the Australian National University, its role in a two
hundred and fifty million dollars restructure has been concealed even
from Parliament, raising concerns about transparency and accountability. Today, senior
reporter for the Saturday Paper, Rick Morton on how consultants
gain control of the university sector and what it could
(00:48):
mean for the future of higher education. It's Monday, June sixteenth, Rick.
Universities as a sector have been sounding the alarm for
a long time. The government policy, including funding counts and
student caps, has been having a big impact on their
(01:11):
ability to function. So can you give me some examples
of how consultants fit into that. How are universities using them?
Speaker 2 (01:17):
So consultants appear to be coming in and great example
of that is one I covered recently at a University
of Technology Sydney where KPMG were brought in. But we're
essentially told go and look at individual research output from
individual researchers and produce a master list of those who
are not contributing enough profit to the university, which, as
(01:39):
it was put to me, would probably contravene the enterprise
bargaining agreement at that university because you can't you could
performance manage someone for not meeting expectations. You can't make
redundancies based on performance. That's not how this is meant
to work. And so the consultants, of course took a
particular corporate view across the board. They're looking at profit
and loss, they're looking at ways to rationalize centralized services.
(02:01):
But the actual structure of the university is incredibly special
for a reason. It's meant to be a kind of
a distributed network of knowledge centers, faculties, people who are
learned in their field, who contribute to the life of
the university and who are cooperative in the way that
(02:23):
university is run. And increasingly, particularly with consultants like the
NOUS group, which is one that will come to in
quite a bit of detail, the advice is centralize all
of your functions and to the degree possible handicap what
it is the faculties and the academic staff are able
to do and the say they have over the future
of this institution, which would make it a lot more
(02:44):
like a corporation and a lot less like a university.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
Now, there are a number of consultancy groups involved in
all of this, but you did mention Nowscroup, which is
a global consulting firm and they do a lot of
work with the Australian National University. So what did you
find out of the role they are playing there? Now?
Speaker 2 (03:02):
This is fascinating and I particularly there it in on
them because I think they've had the most astounding growth
off the back of their participation in higher education advisory services.
And of course this story was first being told through
the Austrained Financial Review of former colleague of mine, Julie
Her who's a fantastic reporter, was looking at misgivings, I
guess is one way of saying it. Early on within
(03:23):
the tenure of the new vice chancellor there, Professor Genevieve
Bell and her chancellor, Julie Bishop. Now Genevieve Bell had
announces his kind of two hundred and fifty million dollar
restructure at the A and U because they said that
they were running out of money structurally and they were
going to be six hundred to something job losses. But
what they didn't do is tell anyone that they were
(03:43):
using the Nouse Group's advice or paying them for that advice.
In fact, they were incredibly tricky with how they disclosed
any mention at all that they were using external consultants
to advise on this enormous restructure.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
How wisepread is the use of consultants across the Australian
university sector. I mean they're everywhere.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
They are literally everywhere. I mean KPMG was paid eight
and a half million dollars for business advisory, which is
consulting at the University of Melbourne. Deloitte was another one
and a half grooth of the university has paid now
I think it was almost two and a half million
over the last sixteen months. And then lots of boutique
(04:24):
ones that are even like a tier below now. So
they're absolutely everywhere. And the irony is that universities themselves
offered have their own consulting output, but they won't use
them because they're worried to push back from staff and
letting their plans kind of leak out into the public.
The way the system has been built up, there's so
much money sloshing around that to the extent that a
(04:48):
firm wants to give you the tough advice, they're only
prepared to do so if they think they can still
keep getting work. I mean, that's just the sad reality
is that you're not necessarily going to be told anything
you don't want to hear.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
Coming up after the break, David Pocock takes on unibosses Rick.
Late last year, the A and you were brought in
front of Center Estimates to ask about the restructures you
mentioned earlier, and David Pocock was trying to get to
the bottom of how much the UNI had paid now
(05:23):
Scroup for the very structure. Thank you, Thank you cha.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
Just finally, is it correct that you've engaged in our
scroup and what what work are they doing? Is it
related to finding savings or what's the scope of that work.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
There was one example where the chief Operating Office that
Jonathan Churchill was asked how much is this contract worth? Yeah,
thank you, senator, We have paid now sort of the
fifty thousand dollars so far this year, okay.
Speaker 3 (05:51):
Seven fifteen, fifty fifty Okay, yeah, you're not.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
With now that's the question, very easy to understand. How
much was this tract worth? And what he said was
we have paid to date fifty thousand dollars to NAS.
That wasn't the question, and there also wasn't correct as
a standalone answer. And if he had been asked how
much he'd been paid, because the invoices at that point
were about four hundred and fifty thousand dollars to NUS.
(06:17):
Now we now know when he asked this question on
November seven last year, that a contract for NOUS had
been signed and set in motion a month before, and
that that contract was worth eight hundred and thirty seven
thousand dollars. Genevieve Bell was also asked have you used
NOUS to advise on the restructure, and the answer she
(06:39):
gave was, I would argue deliberately obtuse.
Speaker 4 (06:43):
I initially engaged the NOWS group a number of months ago, Senator,
to help think about how to look at the role
and the changing role of universities in a global landscape.
I was interested in what were the ways that universities
thoughttrategically and what was a global survey really.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
And what she said was I brought them in early
on in my tenure when I got the VC job
to advise on the university's position in relation to other
universities and how we're tracking. Now that makes it sound
like that's not involved in the restructure.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
That's not true.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
And of course we now know subsequent to that fact
that within seventeen days of the Vice Chancellor starting the job,
she had authorized the pursuit of these consulting firms for
enormous restructure at the A ANDU. When it was subsequently
emerged that David Pocock had been misled, he was furious
(07:40):
and he put out a statement in April this year
essentially saying that he was appalling and that he takes
this incredibly seriously. And the conclusion he reached was that
he had been misled by these officials because they didn't
want to answer the question. And of course after that
there were also a bunch of questions on notice, which
(08:02):
through the Parliamentary Estimate system, you can take a question
on notice, you can take it away, you can use
all your resources at your institution, your department, whatever it is,
and answer the question properly and come back and tell
the Senate the truth. And it is an offense to
mislead the Senate. There were several questions on notice that
printed outright mistruths about the use of Nouw's consulting and
(08:27):
about the value of those contracts. They had to be
recalled and corrected. The question that remains is how did
that happen? Who's signed off on those questions on notice responses?
The fact that there has been a pattern of behavior
here now has led people to ask even more questions
that they might have otherwise been happy to accept the
(08:49):
answers to, which is, what are your motives behind this restructure?
Why are you paying nows? And what are you doing
with the advice that you're refusing to tell us about.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
A lot of secrecy and uncertainty around all this. But
what we do know is that universities are spending a
lot on consultants, which begs the question shouldn't university management,
people like the vice chancellor and the people on the
University council have a sense of how to make savings
or where to spend money, or how to structure their business.
(09:21):
I mean, isn't that their job?
Speaker 2 (09:22):
Yeah, that is their job and they should do it.
We have a fundamental structural problem with universities and to
some extent they won't be financially sustainable, while the government
that funds and regulates them doesn't seem to care about
their role in society. But vcs are paid, you know,
somebody around a million dollars on average in Australia to
(09:44):
do these jobs because we're told they demand an incredibly
astute and sensitive skill set, which is to manage the
academic output and the rankings and the quality of the
institution with the business of running such a large organization.
But university councils have even fewer oversight mechanisms than a
(10:08):
corporate board. There are no shareholders to whom they're accountable.
There is no publicly listed ASX meeting for these council members.
The VC, particularly at university the Australian National University, the
VC can only lose their job if they resign or
if the council recinds it.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
So, Rick, what impact do you think all this will
have on the university sector. The reliance on consultancy firms,
the lack of funding from federal government to universities. What
does the future of the university sector look like At
the moment.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
It's pretty grim, and you know, staff are already overworked
and overburdened, particularly academic and professional staff, trying to just
keep the wheels turning on these places that have been gutted.
And you know, they tend to get gutted every other
four years. You know, there's always a restructure happening at
a university at any given point in time. And of
course university vcs didn't want to make these decisions on
(11:04):
their own because they're so much political blowback within the organization,
so they get these consultants in. But of course now
over I'm very cranky that they're using these consultants. So
you've got Griffith University now just hiring the consultants as
full time employees. You know, someone told me to look
at the Vice Chancellor's office at Griffith and there's two
employees there who were hired directly from NAUS who are
(11:25):
principal consultants who are now directing transformation within the Vice
Chancellor's office. So it's pretty grim. I mean, what does
it look like in the future we just keep cutting.
And now somemselves are quite explicit in their report where
they interviewed the chief operating officers. They literally said that
the academy's up for grabs. That's how they phrased it's
up for graps, which tells you everything you need to know.
(11:46):
I think about the way that they.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
See this, Rick, thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
Thanks mate, I appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
Also in the news today, Prime Minister Anthony Alberinezi has
confirmed he'll meet face to face with Donald Trump this
week in a high stakes diplomatic encounter on the sidelines
of the g seventh Summit in Canada. The meeting comes
amid escalating tensions in the Middle East and growing uncertainty
over the Orcas submarine deal, which the Pentagon is now reviewing.
Albanzi says he'll use the meeting to press Australia's case
(12:29):
for a tariff exemption and to highlight the strategic benefits
of Orcas for the US and Israel has launched a
series of strikes on Iran's energy infrastructure, targeting a major
oil refinery in Tehran and a gas facility in the
country's largest production field. The attacks have sent crude oil
prices sharply higher and raised fears of a sustained spike
(12:52):
and fuel costs. Analysts warned that any further escalation, particularly
in the Strait of Hamas, could destabilize global energy markets.
This is being seven am. We'll be back tomorrow. Thanks
for listening.
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