Carolyn Allport, president of the National Tertiary Education Union, said she did not wish to belittle the review but it did not "speak to the policy environment that we're in".

She said the review gave more weight to labour market concerns than to academic freedom and was "incredibly unhelpful" in its failure to say how market-led differentiation of tertiary institutions could be modified to serve education as a public good.

"It is a lazy policy response," Dr Allport told an NTEU meeting at the University of Sydney last week. "The Government is very busy and very inexperienced. The Bradley review is a recycled document from 25 years ago. (The sector is) quite capable of creating something a lot more interesting and a lot more sustainable."

Tomorrow at RMIT University in Melbourne Dr Allport launches the NTEU's biggest policy push in recent times under the banner Our Universities Matter: Investing in People and Society. A key proposal is a new federal statute for universities to assert their distinct role within the integrated tertiary sector (including vocational education and training) expected to emerge after Bradley.

Degree education as well as postgraduate degree education, research and research training were at the core of a university, Dr Allport said.

The statute would bring in a stricter and clearer definition of a university. This week Dr Allport suggested teaching-only universities, universities with only one research area and for-profit universities should not qualify.

The statute would borrow an Irish legislative definition that married individual academic freedom to the independence of universities as institutions. The NTEU preferred this because it believed the Howard government was hostile not only to researchers but to universities generally.

"We thought the Irish (definition) was really good and we think we've convinced (Education Minister) Julia Gillard as well," Dr Allport said.

This week she explained the definition would confer protection not through legal sanctions but through an institution's reputation in the international market.

"It is symbolic but its symbolism is connected to the concept of the university's reputation and the reputation is connected to their market," she said.

At the Sydney meeting, DrAllport said the Bradley review had little to say about the entry of overseas universities.

She also criticised South Australia's Premier Mike Rann, who subsidised Adelaide campuses for Carnegie-Mellon and other foreign institutions.

"Maybe Rann's popularity might start to fall, he's got a few issues going," she said. "We can always say no (to foreign campuses) if they're giving us competition in an unfair way."

She said the Rudd Government's apparent wish to create an integrated tertiary sector, in the interests of social justice and higher participation, was "a very worthy aspiration".

But for universities it would be "probably good and bad or good and difficult". One issue would be standards, given any attempt to bring together self-accrediting and non-self-accrediting institutions. Another issue was competition and the public good.

"It's quite clear that the review anticipates direct competition between TAFE and universities," she said.