The Australian higher education sector is navigating a period of rapid digital transformation alongside major legislative reforms aimed at strengthening data privacy and enabling public sector data sharing. The intersection of digital transformation and evolving higher education policy creates a strategic tension: while richer equity datasets are crucial for advancing policy goals, they contain sensitive personal information that heightens privacy, fairness and governance risks. 

This report explores the current and emerging legislative and regulatory frameworks for data privacy in Australia, and how pending reforms might affect universities and the governance of student equity data. It analyses how Australian universities approach data and digital governance in their policies, and the extent to which these frameworks consider student equity. It also examines the challenges and opportunities student equity practitioners and senior university leaders identify in balancing the value and risks of student equity data within current governance frameworks and cultures.

The findings reveal that Australian universities face significant and largely unresolved governance challenges in relation to student equity data, spanning three interconnected levels:

• the privacy and regulatory landscape is fragmented and in transition
• institutional policy frameworks are fragmented, siloed, and poorly equipped to govern equity data
• frontline equity staff and the students they serve bear the consequences of governance failure.

The report makes a number of recommendations for government and policymakers, the sector steward and regulator, universities and peak bodies and professional associations.