7am The consulting firms reshaping our universities
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Jun 15, 2025 Rick Morton, a Senior reporter for The Saturday Paper, reveals the unsettling rise of consulting firms like Nous Group in Australian universities. He discusses how these firms are restructuring institutions, often without transparency. Morton raises concerns about the decision-making power they wield and the fragility of academic governance. The conversation also highlights the impacts of budget cuts and outsourcing on education, painting a grim picture of the future of higher education in the face of corporate influence.
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Consultants Target Unprofitable Researchers
- Consultants at the University of Technology Sydney were tasked with identifying unprofitable researchers. They applied a corporate lens focusing on profit and loss, contradicting normal academic protections.
Consultants Push Centralisation in Universities
- Consulting firms encourage centralising power and reducing faculty control at universities. This shifts universities towards corporate structures, undermining academic governance.
Secretive Consulting at ANU Restructure
- At the Australian National University, the $250 million restructure led by VC Genevieve Bell involved secretive consulting by Nous Group. The university concealed their role and payments from parliament.