Adelaide and SA uni merger will not benefit students, says professor

Economist Richard Blandy says simply merging two larger universities is not a golden path to success.

University of Adelaide vice-chancellor Peter Rathjen.

Eminent South Australian economist Richard Blandy has attacked the idea of merging the states’ two largest universities, saying the loss of competition between the University of Adelaide and the University of South Australia will serve students poorly.

Professor Blandy, an emeritus professor at Adelaide’s Flinders University, said that any attempt to boost the South Australian capital as a higher education city by merging the two institutions was doomed to failure.

“It is obvious that there cannot be a simple, amalgamation-based, road to becoming pre-eminent as a higher education city. Otherwise every state and country in the world would be doing it,” he wrote to University of Adelaide vice-chancellor Peter Rathjen, who invited feedback on the merger proposal from the university’s alumni, of whom Professor Blandy is one.

In his submission, published on the Indaily news website, Professor Blandy said the discussion paper on the merger proposal, released by the two universities last month, was “overwhelmingly tendentious” and “profoundly unpersuasive”.

“There is no evidence presented that it would have positive effects,” he said.

Professor Blandy said the merger discussion paper’s assertion that “a large, merged institution would have the potential to generate economies of scale which could in turn generate funds for strategic investment” was not based on evidence.

“Adelaide and UniSA are both well and truly on the flat part of their average cost curves, where increasing scale alone will not lower average unit costs further,” Professor Blandly said in his submission.

Professor Blandy had a long academic career as an economist at Flinders University and the University of South Australia, and for many years led the National Institute of Labour Studies at Flinders.

In the submission he also attacked another argument presented in the merger discussion paper, that a larger, merged university might have greater impact.

“Combining the universities does not necessarily increase their combined activity from what it was before amalgamation,” he said.

Professor Blandy said there were likely to be greater spin-off benefits from competition, as well as co-operation, between all three South Australian universities.

“The reduction in competitive dynamism from a merger is likely to serve the South Australian public and students poorly as the pressure to improve performance diminishes,” he said.

He said the vision for the merged university expressed in the discussion paper was “waffle” and “could have come straight out of the spiel for the multifunction polis”, a failed 1990s proposal for a new technological city near Adelaide that was supposed to spur innovation.

He said there were no shortcuts to creating a successful, high ranked university.

“It will take individual academic brilliance, hard and inspired teamwork and supportive, flexible administration over a long period of time to achieve any such ambition,” he said.

Professor Blandy also released his letter to University of Adelaide chancellor Kevin Scarce, who had separately asked graduates of the university for their feedback on the merger proposal.

The universities declined to respond to Professor Blandy, saying that all opinions were welcome and encouraged in the consultation process.

The discussion paper is online at www.newuniversity.nousgroup.com.au. Submissions close on September 21.