The TEQSA consultant degree programs need is not a writer. Building a conventional bachelor or masters course for accreditation turns on four pieces of work: benchmarking the course against the discipline as it is taught elsewhere, assembling a staffing profile that meets Standard 3.2, running an external review that is independent enough to be believed, and aligning the design with the professional body whose accreditation the graduates will need. A consultant adds value where a provider lacks the networks, assessment literacy or regulatory experience to do those four things itself.
This article sets out each of the four, and then says plainly when a consultant is worth engaging and when the provider should do the work alone. It draws on fifteen years of TEQSA registration and course accreditation practice.
Why traditional degrees are harder than they look
A bachelor degree at AQF level 7 or a masters at level 9 looks like the safest thing a provider can build, because the shape is familiar. That familiarity is the risk: assessors have read hundreds of business, IT, nursing and education degrees, and a gap that might be forgiven in a novel field is not forgiven in an established one.
The AQF level descriptors set the outcomes for each level, and Standard 3.1 of the Threshold Standards requires course design to be informed by the discipline and by advances in it. A level 9 coursework masters must reach advanced and integrated understanding beyond the level 7 outcomes, and its volume of learning depends on the student's entry point. Our guide to registering masters degrees deals with that entry-point question in detail.
Discipline benchmarking: the work most providers skip
The first thing the TEQSA consultant degree programs need does is benchmark. That means placing the proposed course beside three to five comparable courses at Australian providers, comparing learning outcomes, unit structure, credit points, assessment mix, work-integrated learning and entry requirements, and being able to explain every material difference. Assessors ask, in effect, why a graduate of this course should be treated as equivalent to a university graduate with the same title.
Providers skip this because it is tedious and because the answer is sometimes unwelcome. In my experience the benchmarking exercise changes the course in about half the cases where it is done properly: a capstone is added, an assessment weighting is shifted, a unit is renamed to match the field's convention. A consultant with a network in the discipline can do this faster and more honestly than a provider whose staff all trained at the same institution.
Staffing under Standard 3.2
The second piece is staffing, and it is where conventional degrees most often stall. Standard 3.2 requires teaching staff to hold a qualification at least one AQF level above the course they teach, or equivalent professional experience, and to be active in scholarship. For a bachelor degree that means level 8 or higher; for a masters it means doctoral qualifications or a documented equivalence, and the equivalence must be argued case by case rather than asserted.
The mistake is to design the course first and staff it later. A masters that needs six doctorally qualified academics is not accreditable if the provider has two. A consultant's contribution here is usually to size the staffing requirement early, to help the academic board write an equivalence framework it can defend, and to be candid when the course as designed cannot be staffed at the intended scale. Our article on course design for TEQSA accreditation sets out how staffing evidence sits inside the application.
External review and professional accreditation
The third piece is external review. Standard 5.1 requires course approval to be informed by external referencing and by review from people independent of the provider. The reviewers should be senior academics in the discipline from other institutions, chosen for their standing rather than their friendliness. In my experience a review that raises no substantive concern is read by assessors as a review that was not independent, and the academic board's response to the concerns is the real evidence.
The fourth piece is professional accreditation. Most conventional degrees lead to a regulated or accredited profession, and the professional body's standards are often more prescriptive than TEQSA's. Aligning the two from the start avoids a course that TEQSA accredits and the profession rejects. A consultant who has taken a similar course through both processes knows where the bodies diverge and can design to the stricter of the two.
When the TEQSA consultant degree programs need is worth the fee
A consultant is worth engaging when the provider is building its first course at a given AQF level, when it has no staff with recent experience of accreditation, when the professional accreditation pathway is unfamiliar, or when the timeline is tight. Course accreditation for a registered provider costs $5,200 at the preliminary stage and $19,100 at the substantive stage on TEQSA's current fee schedule, and a request for further information that pushes the assessment into an extension costs far more in delay than the adviser's fee.
A consultant is not worth engaging to write the course. The academic board must own the design, the staff must be able to explain it, and the record must show the board approving it on the basis of advice rather than adopting a document prepared elsewhere. In my experience the best engagements are the ones where the consultant's name appears in the minutes as a presenter of options and never as the author of the decision. The shape of conventional degrees is changing, as our article on the future of degree programs in higher education discusses, but the discipline of building them properly is not.
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Frequently asked questions
What qualifications must staff hold to teach a bachelor degree?
Under Standard 3.2, teaching staff need a qualification at least one AQF level above the course, which for a level 7 bachelor degree means level 8 or higher, or equivalent professional experience documented through an equivalence framework, together with continuing scholarship in the field.
Does a masters degree need doctorally qualified staff?
Generally yes for a level 9 course, since the one-level-above rule points to AQF level 10, although a documented professional equivalence can be accepted for some staff. The academic board should approve an equivalence framework and apply it case by case.
What is discipline benchmarking?
Comparing a proposed course with several comparable Australian courses on learning outcomes, structure, credit, assessment and entry requirements, and explaining any material difference. It is part of the external referencing Standard 5.1 expects in course approval.
Should professional accreditation be sought before or after TEQSA accreditation?
The two should be designed for together, since professional bodies often require TEQSA accreditation first but apply their own, sometimes stricter, standards. Designing to the stricter requirement from the outset avoids a course that one body accepts and the other rejects.
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.