The Greens have criticised the University of Sydney and called on management to “come clean and disclose” more detail about a payment to a for-profit company it part-owns with PwC.
The university paid the company Innowell Pty Ltd to provide “a health and wellbeing portal” to its staff and students. Innowell’s major shareholders are the University of Sydney (32%) and consultancy firm PwC (45%). University of Sydney professors Ian Hickie and Jane Burns are also minor shareholders.
The university has defended the arrangement as appropriate but the National Tertiary Education Union has described it as “violation of the university’s relationship with its students”, arguing the university’s commercial interest was not clearly communicated to staff and students.
The federal eduction minister, Jason Clare, did not directly criticise the university, noting it was largely autonomous and independent, but a spokesperson said the government was “taking immediate action to improve university governance”.
Leaked emails show the vice chancellor, Mark Scott, did not initially disclose the financial interests when introducing staff to the mental health app and encouraging them to use it, although he did acknowledge it was developed by university’s Brain and Mind Centre and that participation was voluntary.
Separate emails show university management encouraged medical school staff to actively “promote” the app to their professional connections and students by email, newsletters and at team meetings.
A page on the university’s website with information about the Innowell app for current students does not state that the university and PwC are major Innowell Pty Ltd shareholders.
Innowell received a $33m non-competitive grant from the federal government months after it was founded in 2017, after lobbying from Hickie, who was a national mental health commissioner at the time and led the university’s Brain and Mind Centre. There is no suggestion of wrongdoing by Hickie.
The Greens senator Mehreen Faruqi, who is the party’s education spokeswoman, described the university’s payment to Innowell as a “scandal”, arguing it “illustrates the need for a complete overhaul of university governance and greater democracy on campus”.
“The University of Sydney has a lot of explaining to do,” Faruqi said. “As a publicly funded institution, the University of Sydney has an obligation to come clean and disclose the payments and their interest in Innowell.”
A university spokesperson did not directly respond to Faruqi’s criticism, but has already confirmed no government funds were used to provide the “mental fitness tool”. The fee was not disclosed with the university describing it as “commercial in confidence”.
The university webpage states Innowell will not share any personal or health information with the university, but makes it clear that if users consent, de-identified personal information may be shared with the company’s study partners, which include the university.
“The university has absolutely no access to individual data through the Innowell health and wellbeing portal – basic, de-identified usage data is provided only to assess levels of user engagement and trends as is standard,” a university spokesperson said.
“It should be clear there are two separate Innowell products; a health and wellbeing portal and a clinical platform. The health and wellbeing portal for staff and students is completely separate from the clinical Innowell platform, used by the Brain and Mind Centre.”
The spokesperson said other internal web resources stated the Innowell product was designed in collaboration with the Brain and Mind Centre and that it was a joint venture with PwC Australia.
Hickie said the Brain and Mind Centre used “completely anonymised, aggregated and deidentified data to support the evaluation and continuous improvement of the tools”.
“The way Innowell uses data is outlined on the university website, noting where consent is required, and on the Innowell’s site,” he said.
“Both Innowell and the university have strict privacy policies in place that govern the collection, use and disclosure of personal information. All data is managed in accordance with these policies.”
Guardian Australia has previously reported that despite being awarded significant government funding, there are concerns there is no strong evidence to support the Innowell app and that the funding has not been of value to taxpayers – a claim the company and Hickie strongly reject.
Faruqi said the university’s payment to its joint-venture demonstrated “the corrosive corporatisation of universities”.
“This is yet more evidence that the corporate university model is a failure,” Faruqi said “It’s time to reimagine universities as essential, democratic places which exist to serve the public good and which are accountable to staff and students, not executive management.”
