Policy without (much) pain - University of Ballarat

Policy without (much) pain9. Policies spanning multiple regulatory regimesLegislation shapes institutional policy. It provides the source of authority for institutional activitiesand decisions, and it sets limits and rules for these matters. So what happens when institutionalpolicy has to cater for two different sets of legislation? Or even three? This can arise when aninstitution: has campuses in more than one Australian state has campuses in more than one country in Australia, is a ‘dual sector’ institution, offering both higher education and VocationalEducation and Training (VET) courses.In these circumstances, different legislation sets different rules for key aspects of the institution’sactivities. For example:Australian federal and state legislation set different conditions of employment for highereducation and VET teaching staff. Where an institution has a campus or partner program inSouth-East Asia, the local employment legislation may permit less generous conditions forremuneration, leave and so on; local partners in the other country will expect to operateunder these conditions, and indeed this may be essential for profitability of the local campusor program.New Zealand and Australian privacy legislation set stringent requirements for the protectionof students’ personal information, but these requirements may be absent in countries outsideAustralasia. In those countries, parents and other sponsors of student’s study costs mayexpect to have direct access to information on the student’s academic progress, and theremay be no legislative bar to such access.Tertiary education legislation in other countries may use different terms or may use the sameterms differently.If we are based at the ‘home’ campus it is all too easy to forget the needs of remote campuses oroffshore partner programs when developing policy. Similarly, in a dual sector institution, if wemainly work with higher education processes, it is all too easy to forget that VET has differentrequirements and concerns.~ 16 ~