https://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/uni-merger-has-many-risks-says-uni-of-adelaide-professor-derek-abbott/news-story/479fdb923ae3abdcc6e8964d940e3151
TIM DODD HIGHER EDUCATION EDITOR, The Australian
FIRST PUBLISHED AT 7:06PM SEPTEMBER 12, 2023
One of the University of Adelaide’s top research professors has said the planned merger of his institution with the University of South Australia is “fixing a problem we don’t have”.
Physicist and electronic engineer Derek Abbott, told a South Australian parliamentary committee last week the University of Adelaide was doing well, punching well above its weight, and a merger with the very different UniSA would create major risks.
The University of Adelaide is a research-focused institution in the Group of Eight attracting high-ATAR students and offering advanced degrees, while UniSA is more teaching-focused and offers applied degrees, generally enrolling students who are less academically prepared.
“A merger of universities with such disparate rankings is unprecedented and leads to enormous issues,” Professor Abbott told the committee, which is examining the bill to set up the new merged university. The merger, which is strongly backed by SA Labor Premier Peter Malinauskas, can go ahead only if the legislation is passed, and Labor does not control the upper house.
Supporters of the merger say it will produce a university with higher research budgets, boost local industry, attract international students, increase skill levels in SA and eventually be highly ranked.
However, Professor Abbott told the committee a merged university would have to cater to students across a wide range of academic preparedness, which would lead to two-tiered degrees that were unpopular with students. He said the approximately 200 top researchers responsible for Adelaide’s high research ranking were in demand around the world and could leave.
“As soon as merger activities slow down their research progress they will be a flight risk,” Professor Abbott said.
He said the two universities had a large difference in ranking, a different ethos and different cultures. “What is concerning is that no one knows how to even do a merger like that. Our management has zero experience with that,” he said.
That the business case for the merger had not been independently evaluated was “an extraordinary oversight” and “raises a big red flag”, he said.
Professor Abbott also said it was extraordinary that the merger proposal had not been benchmarked against alternative strategies. “It means there is nothing to gauge it in terms of cost-benefit,” he said.
He told the committee the study that produced the merger proposal was done without transparency to university staff.
“How can one possibly execute a merger as large and as complex as this if staff have not been engaged to a level where they have buy-in and ownership of the process?” he asked.
“This is not a merger of two car factories. Universities are complex human ecosystems where the capital is the people."
Professor Abbott said the University of Adelaide should be seen as currently delivering good value for money. He said the US had more than 150 universities with endowments over $2bn and the University of Adelaide outranked 100 of them with much smaller resources.
“We are ranked higher than hundreds of universities around the world with larger endowments,” he said.
“We are arguably the top university in the world for ranking per dollar input.”