The Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (Teqsa) proposes using the results from Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) – along with citations and peer review culture – to gauge whether universities meet mandatory research quality thresholds.
ERA assesses performance against fields of research. The main threshold, adopted after the 2019 review of provider category standards, requires universities to produce research at “world standard” or better in at least half of the broad fields of education in which they teach. Universities have until 2030 to meet the benchmark.
Six universities – Bond, Charles Sturt, Federation and Torrens universities, plus the universities of Divinity and Notre Dame – did not achieve the quality threshold when ERA was last conducted in 2018.
