An academic board TEQSA will accept has four features: it holds real authority over academic quality, delegated by the governing body and recorded in terms of reference; it is chaired and populated by people who are independent of the provider's commercial management, including external academics; it actually decides things, including course approval, and can say no; and its minutes show all of that happening. Standard 6.3 of the Threshold Standards requires academic governance with responsibility for, and authority over, academic quality. Everything else is the practical question of how to build a body that meets it.
This is the build guide. It draws on fifteen years of TEQSA registration work, most of which has involved either establishing an academic board from nothing or repairing one that TEQSA had read as advisory.
What does an academic board TEQSA will accept look like?
Standard 6.3 of the Higher Education Standards Framework requires that processes and structures are in place to ensure academic oversight, that there is a body with responsibility for academic governance that is separate from and accountable to the governing body, and that this body oversees course approval, academic integrity, the monitoring of academic quality and outcomes, and the delegation of academic functions. TEQSA's guidance note on academic governance, among its guidance notes, expands on what it expects, with the usual caveat that guidance is not itself a standard.
The word to hold onto is authority. An academic board that recommends is a committee. An academic board that decides, within a delegation from the governing body, is what the standard describes. That distinction runs through every design choice that follows, and it is the reason the governance mistakes that stall applications so often begin with an academic board that was set up to advise the CEO.
Who should sit on an academic board?
Membership determines whether an academic board TEQSA assesses is read as independent. The pattern that works has three elements.
External academic members are the first. At least two, and preferably a majority of the academic membership, should be academics from other institutions, with disciplinary standing in the fields the provider teaches and experience of academic governance elsewhere. They are the board's credibility with the regulator and its source of comparison with sector practice. They should be appointed for fixed terms, paid a sitting fee, and given no other role with the provider.
The chair is the second, and it should be one of those external academics. An academic board chaired by the CEO, the owner or the dean is read by TEQSA as controlled by management, however the terms of reference are written. The chair should have chaired or sat on an academic board elsewhere, should report to the governing body in person, and should be the person TEQSA meets at a site visit.
Internal members are the third: the head of academic operations or dean, the course coordinators, and a small number of teaching staff, with student representation where the provider has students. The CEO may attend, and in a small provider often should, but as a member without a vote on course approval or, better, as an attendee rather than a member. The company secretary or a governance officer should service the board, take the minutes and manage the papers, so that the record is kept by someone accountable to the governing body rather than to the academic staff.
What should the terms of reference say?
The terms of reference are the instrument by which the governing body delegates academic authority to the academic board, and TEQSA reads them closely. They should be adopted by the governing body, not by the academic board itself, and they should be explicit on five points.
Purpose and authority: that the board is responsible for academic quality and holds delegated authority to approve courses, approve academic policies, and determine academic matters within its scope, reporting to the governing body. Membership and independence: the composition described above, terms of appointment, the requirement for an external academic chair, and how conflicts of interest are declared and managed. Functions: course approval and review, oversight of assessment and moderation, academic integrity, admissions and credit policy, monitoring of student outcomes, benchmarking, and the approval of the annual academic quality report to the governing body. Committees: any sub-committees, such as a course advisory or learning and teaching committee, with their own delegations. And operation: quorum, frequency, papers, minutes, and the requirement that decisions be recorded with reasons.
What the terms of reference should not do is reserve academic decisions to management. A clause providing that course approvals are subject to CEO endorsement, or that the board's decisions take effect only when ratified by the managing director, converts the board into an advisory committee and will be read as such.
What must the academic board actually decide?
Course approval is the central function, and it is where TEQSA tests whether the board is real. Before a course goes to TEQSA for accreditation, or is self-accredited, the academic board should have received a full proposal, the external benchmarking, the independent review, and the staffing and resource plan; should have discussed them; and should have approved the course, with or without conditions, on academic grounds. What TEQSA looks for in a new course is substantially what the academic board should have looked for first.
Beyond course approval, the board should be approving the academic policy suite, receiving and acting on assessment moderation and academic integrity reports, monitoring progression, retention and completion data and asking for action where it is poor, reviewing courses on a cycle, receiving benchmarking results, and approving the academic quality report that goes to the governing body. Each of these produces a paper, a discussion and a decision, and each is evidence under Domain 5 of the Standards as well as Domain 6.
What must academic board minutes show TEQSA?
The minutes are the evidence. TEQSA reads them, and reads them for engagement rather than for form. Good academic board minutes record who attended and who declared an interest; what papers were received; the substance of the discussion, including questions asked and concerns raised; the decision, with reasons where the matter was contested; any conditions attached; and the actions arising, with owners and dates. They record when the board declined to approve something, or sent it back, because that is the clearest possible evidence of authority.
Minutes that read "the course proposal was tabled and approved" fail this test. So do minutes that record the CEO presenting every item and the board agreeing, or minutes in which a consultant's name appears as the person who explained the provider's own course to its own academic board. The practical discipline is a minute-taker who understands what the record is for, and a chair who insists that discussion is captured. It is also worth keeping the papers with the minutes, so that at re-registration the evidence index can point to both.
Building it from nothing
For a new provider, the sequence matters. Adopt the terms of reference at the governing body first. Recruit the external chair and external members before anything else, because their availability determines the meeting calendar and their standing determines the board's credibility. Hold the first meeting to adopt the policy framework, not to approve the course, so that the course approval is the board's second or third act rather than its first. Have the course proposal come to the board with the external review already done, and let the board's decision show that it read the review.
Then keep meeting. A board that met twice before the application and not since is a board TEQSA will ask about. The application process includes a site visit at which the chair will be asked to explain the board's decisions, and the only preparation for that conversation is a board that has actually been making them.
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— a one-page self-assessment against Standards 6.1 to 6.3, including the academic board build sequence, drawn from our governance and TEQSA registration work with private providers. Get the checklist
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Frequently asked questions
Can the CEO chair the academic board?
It is strongly inadvisable. TEQSA reads an academic board chaired by the CEO, owner or dean as controlled by management. The chair should be an external academic with experience of academic governance elsewhere.
How many external members does an academic board need?
The Standards do not set a number. In practice at least two external academics, preferably forming a majority of the academic membership, with an external chair, is the pattern TEQSA accepts as independent.
Does the academic board have to approve courses before TEQSA accreditation?
Yes. Standard 5.1 requires course approval through the provider's own academic governance, informed by external referencing, before the course is offered, and TEQSA reads the academic board's minutes to confirm that the approval was substantive.
What is the difference between an academic board and an academic advisory committee?
Authority. An academic board holds delegated authority from the governing body to decide academic matters, including course approval. An advisory committee recommends to management, and TEQSA does not accept it as meeting Standard 6.3.
Dr Brendan Moloney is CEO of Darlo Higher Education, Australia's largest specialist TEQSA consultancy. He holds a PhD from the University of Melbourne, is a Cambridge University Press author on governance in higher education, and has advised private providers on registration and course accreditation for more than fifteen years.