Sydney Prof Babones casts doubt on gains from merger, income from international students

A uni merger would not be a magical pathway to higher rankings and better student outcomes, a Sydney researcher says.

Associate Professor Salvatore Babones at Sydney University. Picture: John Feder

Creating a bigger university in South Australia through mergers would not guarantee higher rankings, nor better student satisfaction, a prominent researcher says.

A merger might only improve efficiency and reduce costs through job cuts, Associate Professor Salvatore Babones, from the University of Sydney, said.

Australian universities were already large in global terms, and while not the biggest in the country, the three SA institutions are of sufficient scale to make a mark, he said.

“There is little reason to believe that, beyond a certain minimum, bigger is better,” Professor Babones, pictured, says in a book published on Monday.

“Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard and Stanford all cluster around 20,000 students by headcount, which would put them in the bottom half among Australian universities.”

In comparison, UniSA has 26,000 students, Adelaide 23,000 and Flinders 18,000, in full-time equivalent estimates.

Mergers remain on the agenda in SA, including a Labor Party election policy to explore the idea, despite several past failures to reach a deal, including most recently in 2018.

“There is no statistically significant connection between size and quality (around the world) in rankings or student satisfaction,” Professor Babones said. Financial efficiencies from being bigger would depend on the political appetite for job cuts, he said.

Professor Babones is a sociologist focused on the Indo-Pacific region, and a regular contributor to Quadrant magazine and individual liberty advocate, the Centre for Independent Studies.

His book, Australia’s Universities – Can They Reform, raises concerns about high proportions of international students.

He said Australian degrees were cheaper for international students than degrees at similar OECD universities. His analysis blames poor investment decisions by universities rather than the loss of international student revenue during Covid-19 for the sector’s financial stress.