John Ross, Are NDAs quietly compromising universities’ mission?, Times Higher Education, 22 January 2026
Critics allege that Australian universities have developed a bad habit of secrecy around severance agreements even when it serves no reasonable purpose – or, worse, prevents an important wider issue from being highlighted. But is there more to the issue than meets the eye? John Ross reports.
The first rule of Fight Club, famously, is you do not talk about Fight Club. But when it comes to fights within universities, the imperative for secrecy kicks in most insistently once peace has been re-established.
Higher education certainly has no shortage of fights – or arbitration agreements. The Victorian branch of the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU), for instance, says it successfully intervened in 50 employment disputes across seven of the state’s public universities between January and October 2025, obtaining settlements on behalf of its members. Of the 50, 28 were subject to deeds of release: legal documents restricting employee behaviour post-severance. All but two of those contained non-disparagement clauses – and all of them contained confidentiality clauses.