Q&A: Bill Shorten talks VC pay cuts, student happiness, and giving UC staff hope

The new vice-chancellor of the University of Canberra (UC) Bill Shorten said universities will never make everybody happy, but they should do their best to try. The former Labor leader and NDIS minister started in the role a month ago. Campus Review education editor Erin Morley sat down with him to ask about his position on current sector issues including vice-chancellor pay, diminishing social license, and student and staff safety. Q: At the Universities Australia (UA) Solutions Summit, you said universities need to connect with society emotionally to regain social license to increase enrolments and voter support. How can institutions do that? A: Firstly, I think universities are doing amazing things. They're literally changing lives, which is pretty much the best thing you can do in the world; to help someone become empowered. But, domestic student demand is falling. We live in a world where universities are perceived as being elite, making genuine mistakes like wage theft, or using international students as a cash cow. You can't just blame the critics. Now, there are some critics of universities you'll never make happy. They don't believe in them, or they think they breed progressive voters and are therefore the enemy. You can't make everyone happy. But that doesn't mean you should give up on trying to make most people happy. I think universities have a lot of relevance to the future of this country, in fact, they are irreplaceable to the future of the country. Therefore, we've got to build a sense of confidence that universities are interested in people. Parents don't want their kids to be treated as numbers or anonymous. They don't want to think their kids are just being taught online without any invitation to have a face-to-face experience. So, I think there's a lot we can do to tell people that we value them. We're here for them, not just our own corporate interests. Q: What are some examples of how you're going to achieve that at the University of Canberra? A: I think Canberra's doing some good things, too. There will be some people in higher education who will say, "Who's this guy? He's just come along and said we're not doing the right thing." All I'm doing is using fresh eyes to reflect a legitimate discussion, which is happening in the broader world. I'm making sure our students don't feel like a number – proper welfare programs, proper non-study related activities, encouraging face-to-face engagement with teachers, tutors and lecturers. I also think that we can try and take some of the bureaucratic red-tape monkey off the back of staff. People want to be teaching, and they want to be researching, they don't necessarily want to spend hours and hours trapped in a nightmare-labyrinth of bad IT and clunky systems. So I think we can generally try and take some of the pressure off staff, which means they're more switched on to their students and they've got the bandwidth for them. I also think we've got to encourage more flexible service delivery of courses – the blend of online and face-to-face. I love face-to-face. But, sometimes students have to work five shifts in a week and they can't get there, so we're making sure online materials are high quality. So it's about accountability; being the university that meets people where they are, not where we've always been. Q: What is your plan for students, and are they your main focus? A: You can't have a university without students. I want to do everything we can to make our students' journeys, between when they choose to enrol here to when they graduate, as high quality and as meaningful as possible. I want students to be so happy with their time at UC that they would recommend it to someone else. I want our students to leave university with qualifications that are respected, which prepare them for the world of work, but also, equally importantly, give them a lifelong love of learning and critical thinking. Q: UC had a lot of job cuts at the end of last year, and that was a big year of jobs cuts and underpayment scandals across the sector. Many staff are feeling undervalued by universities. Is there a plan to make UC staff feel valued, in terms of both teaching and research? Bill: Well, it's early days. I'm doing faculty forums, I don't pretend that I have all the answers, and I don't pretend I've heard all the problems. What's more, a lot of the staff will have the answers, someone's just got to listen to them. There's one four letter word, which I think goes to the heart of what we can do: hope. I want staff here to have hope that things get better, that they will get regular wage rises and have time to do their research. I also want them to feel that the university is going places. University staff wages are not big. People work at universities not just for money, although money is a legitimate issue, workers deserve reward, but staff also want intrinsic reward. I want to tell the stories of our researchers and our teachers, because I want people here to be proud they work at UC. I want them to be able to say to their friends in the community, to strangers they meet at a football match, or at a pub, or just doing school drop off, "I work at UC." And I want those people to respond: "I've heard about them, they're doing good work." So, I want to give staff hope they're part of something bigger than themselves. Q: Vice-chancellor pay is a big topic at the moment. There are some who say VC pay should be benchmarked to other public sector entities. Do you agree with that? A: I've cut my pay by 16 per cent. For me, it's deeds, not words. I'm happy with what I'm getting, I'd be a fool not to be, and I think I'm worth it. I also recognise that people don't feel universities are delivering to expectations. I've come from a profession in politics where people weren't going to be happy until we were hitchhiking to Canberra and camping on the hill. Having said that, I did ask the UC university council, both when I applied for the job and when I was successful, to reduce it. The problem with vice-chancellor pay is not just the wage, it's the sense that universities are not as in touch with people as they should be. Part of our job is to deliver outcomes, and not go missing when there are hard issues. [For example,] as a general rule, I think when you've got a hard issue, the vice-chancellor should be the one speaking on it, not leaving it to a staff member to deal with. That's part of how you justify getting a bigger wage. It's an ongoing conversation. I want to make sure that our governance is reflective of community standards. I want to make sure also that the mistakes which have been made in some places are not occuring. With wage theft, there's no reason not to have a proper payroll system. That's a 1970s-type problem, not this century. Making sure that our students are safe: that's a non-negotiable proposition, very core business. I think when universities are doing better – and a lot of them are doing well, I don't speak from a deficit view of universities – then, perhaps, some of the debate about VC pay [will decrease]. I've been on both sides of wages debates. I've led shareholder resolutions at BHP on behalf of steel workers when executives were getting multiple millions of figures, and yet, they were underperforming. Wages are always going to be an issue in this country. Some people will never be totally happy, but we need to try to, at least, make them feel heard and respected. Q: VC pay is decided by university councils at the moment. The Coalition wants it to be decided by the Independent Remuneration Tribunal, and others want it to be decided by the Australian Tertiary Education Commission (ATEC). Who do you think should decide VC pay? A: I know I have views on lots of things, but I don't have a view on everything. I haven't come to a final view. I'm going to listen to the merits. Previously, when I was a politician, it was the Independent Remuneration Tribunal. I've worked in unions where wages are set by the awards. There's no great mystery or black box about wage formulation. I've been involved in getting wage rises for hundreds of thousands of Australians. It's a balance. I think some level of independence is good, but our university councils are independent. So, I'll take it on notice, I'll hear what people have to say. In the meantime, I'll keeping reminding people that I'm the vice-chancellor who took a 15.7 per cent pay cut before he started. Q: Onto international students, this is the first year of limited international student visas, which some have said has made Australia seem less welcoming to overseas students. How has the new ministerial direction affected your university's reception of international students, and are you doing anything in particular to make them feel welcome? A: I think Australia let down its international students during the Covid-19 pandemic, long before we debated a cap. Some unis worked hard, but a lot of international students were left to fend to their own devices. I remember that prime minister Scott Morrison basically said, "Just get on a plane home." That's probably zero out of 10 for compassion and empathy, and I think that exposed a real sort of moral vacuum at a time we should have been more generous, collectively. The problem with the international student debate is not the students themselves. But, in 2023, there was a confluence of issues. Cost of living was spiraling around the world and there was a housing shortage. After Covid, we had a massive boom in international students. We were enrolling more student visas in one year than we had ever before. People wanted to come here to learn, and that's not a bad thing. But, if your kids can't get a rental due to housing pressures, all of a sudden there's a perception that overseas students take some of the accommodation. And I think that argument's overblown, but like it or not, in a democracy, if that's what the population think, then it's what they think. In our visa system, one of the few levers we have is international student numbers. So, if you've got half a million people coming to Australia, that is a genuine pressure on our infrastructure. And if they're doing low productivity jobs – Uber delivery, etc – then we just can't have that number of temporary visas being issued. At UC, we want to have a high-quality overseas student experience. At first glance, it seems to me we have very good welfare programs to check in and make sure they're okay. We don't allow our overseas students to do just online courses. We want to see them and know that the promise of the experience is matching the reality. Whilst we didn't fill our cap, the debates about international students did spook people for a while. I see international student numbers sort of lifting up again. I think some of the universities have a business model where they enrol massive numbers of international students. They just have to make sure that doesn't compromise the teaching quality for both international and domestic students. We've got to make sure they're getting the attention, the care and the quality that they and their families back home would expect from an Australian university. Q: In regards to student experience, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia have become increasingly prevalent on campuses. What is Canberra uni's strategy to make all students feel safe and heard? A: I think there's been a level of aggression on some campuses towards Jewish students, to the point they feel genuinely unsafe. I'm not going to gaslight them and say they're imagining it. I think some protests have been over the top and too hostile. It's one thing to complain about the policies of another nation, which is fine, that's part of academic freedom and free speech, but to say that Jewish Australians have no right to a homeland and the whole nation should disappear, that's threatening. UC has been fortunate, we haven't had that level of antagonism or hate. We've got some great Muslim student associations. It's worked pretty well here, I have to say. I support UA adopting a definition of anti-Semitism, [then] moving on soon, I hope, to adopt a definition of racism. We've got complaints procedures in place, we'll look at what the parliamentary committees recommended. We'll have a discussion with our academic board, our various authorities and our students. You can debate politics, I've done that my whole life and I think it's sensible to do it, but that can't lurch into people feeling unsafe. Q: Some universities have set up 'safe rooms' for Jewish students. Would you consider that if necessary? A: It's sad if it has to happen, but if it has to happen, it should. We've got safe spaces for queer students, and we want our women students and staff to be safe. If that's the best security advice and that's what the students are seeking, then it should happen. Ignoring the reality doesn't improve safety. Saying there's not a problem never made anybody safer and it invalidates people's lived experience. Erin: Back to university leadership, there is an impending parliamentary inquiry into university governance, a separate review of uni management, and a new National Student Ombudsman, all set up to make sure institutions are correctly serving students and acting as good employers. How do you think the relationship between universities and government should work? A: I accept the proposition that the vice-chancellor and their team are the executive leadership. We deliver courses, do the employing and fulfill the contract made for students. Equally important is university council oversight. For me, that's not an alien concept. I've only ever operated in a world – whether it be the private sector, trade union movement or parliament – where there's always a boss, and you've always got to be held accountable. We should also respect the role of our academic board to make sure that we have integrity in our processes, and that we're minimising academic risk. But, there's nothing being spoken about which I find concerning. Many sections of the Australian economy have periodically had these reviews and overhauls, I made the call for a Royal Commission into the banking sector. I led the call for a Royal Commission into Robodebt. The idea that the Senate or Parliament might want to take the temperature and check on our governance structures and see what improvements can be made, I don't have a deficit model of that. As I said earlier, the idea that hundreds and thousands of people have been ripped off in wages is just ridiculous. When that's happening on a repeated, systemic basis, there's no excuse for that, and the same goes for the safety of students. So reviewing governance to make sure there's accountability, that's part of our social license. Q: You've obviously spent a long time in politics. What skills are you bringing from politics to uni leadership? A: I love bringing people together. It doesn't matter how smart you are, the collective can always generate more ideas. If you can get people of good intent, albeit even if they don't agree with each other or have slightly different priorities, that conversation will always be better than just in individual contributions. Q: It's been a year since the Universities Accord, and many recommendations have seen progress. What's the top of the list for UC this year? A: I want to make sure that our student experience is improving. I want to make sure staff have confidence that they've got job security in a stable, sustainable direction. I want to make sure that the Canberra and southern New South Wales community feel they've got a university that's on their side, talking about their issues and working for their best interests. Q: We've just had a few days of many conversations at the UA Solutions Summit. I'm interested to know what part of the event you found most interesting, or what was talked about there that you connected to the most. A: All the non-speech, side conversations. I'm interested in what other people are doing. I'm a magpie, I'll take shiny stuff from elsewhere because I'm interested in who's doing things really well in student communication, student academic management, course development, research and tertiary harmonisation. I heard a lot of good ideas, and I realised there's an amazing number of people doing a lot of smart stuff, and I'm looking forward to empowering that more and making sure higher education is not a scapegoat for other issues in society. And that we look like we care about people – which we do – I just want to make sure people know that. Q: So you support harmonization between VET and higher education? Bill: I think that's a great idea. Education is education. We can put different words in front of it, but it's all about learning. I want TAFE to be successful and I want UC to be successful, too. I don't have a a view of the world which says I can only win if someone else loses. Read More: