https://www.parliament.sa.gov.au/en/Committees/Committees-Detail

Anthony W Thomas AC FAA, FAIP, CSci, F Inst P 

Elder Professor of Physics

Director: CSSM

Submission Concerning the Proposed Merger of the University of Adelaide

and the University of South Australia

9th August 2023

I wish to express my deep concern about the proposal to merge the State’s two largest universities. I have never seen a clear, reasoned argument that provides rational support for this proposal. As a number of academics have observed, the world’s best universities are not large. That is not what makes a great university. The top ten universities in Japan are all smaller than the University of Adelaide, let alone CalTech, Harvard, MIT, Oxford and Cambridge. South Australia does not need a large “comprehensive university”, it needs a great university and this is not the way to get it.

The Premier himself has publicly suggested that it will involve risk but, quite frankly, I believe that he may not appreciate just how great that risk is. For that he deserves to receive sound, informed advice. Within this University, many academic staff, who with the students, are in the end what a university is about, believe that they have had no meaningful say. It is obvious that, for years after a merger, academic staff time will be dominated by unproductive administrative tasks aimed at making sense of the new system. The time for research will be significantly reduced and along with it the research reputation of the new institution.

I note that as recently described in the Australian (14/6/23):

“Two more Western Australian universities have slammed a proposal to merge the state’s public universities, saying it would cause major disruption and be unlikely to deliver efficiency benefits or improve learning results for students.

In submissions to a state government review, which was asked to recommend on mergers, Curtin University and Edith Cowan University express their strong opposition.

Murdoch University has already made clear it is against the merger proposal and, of the four WA public universities, only the oldest institution, the University of WA, is open to the plan.

However, UWA also warned of downsides to mergers, saying that bringing any two of the four universities together would not ‘clearly provide a competitive advantage in research capacity that could not be achieved through other models such as research joint ventures or federation’.

UWA also warned the disruption of university mergers could cause potential PhD students to avoid WA universities for years, interrupting research programs.”

It would appear that the debate in Western Australia was a little more open than the proceedings here. I suspect that the views of the academic staff at the universities in Western Australia were sought with more enthusiasm and treated with respect.

Quite apart from academic considerations, which should be first and foremost when discussing such a dramatic change in higher education, the financial aspects of the merger are potentially disastrous. University administrations have a history of huge blow-outs when it comes to changes in administrative software. I was a member of the Council of the University of Adelaide during a period in the 1990s when the management software system was replaced, with an eventual cost blow-out of up to $100M, expressed in 1990 dollars. For work as complicated as this, more than twice the size of the 1990s challenge and across two institutions, I would be astonished if the cost was less than half a billion dollars, with a completion time less than a decade. I have been informed of one software engineer who suggested that the cost could be in excess of one billion dollars. There has been no mention of how, if it were to be realized, such a cost might be covered. If it were to come from operating funds it has the potential to destroy the operation of the new university for many years. At the very least, in addition to the funds already offered, the South Australian Government which has insisted upon this merger, would ideally agree to cover any unanticipated cost of this kind.

Of course, the cost of a new, completely integrated software system of a size more than twice that of either of the present institutions is just one clear danger. There may be many others, but without careful and independent scrutiny of the details of the proposed merger one cannot estimate their potential impacts.

If the Government of South Australia really aims to have one world leading institution in this State, it might be better served by taking the sum offered for the merger and injecting it, on a competitive basis over the next 5-10 years, to support the best research projects at the State’s highest ranked university. Such a move by the Government of Queensland several decades ago, involving the University of Queensland, moved that institution from being very ordinary to its current position as one of the best in Australia.

Sadly, it is my view that the plan for this merger has the potential to ruin our only top class university, with its contribution to the economy of billions of dollars per annum, for decades.