Adelaide universities aim to super-size with merger bid

The University of Adelaide will begin a process to merge with the University of South Australia to create a ‘super’ institution.

University of Adelaide student Anna-Mei Szetu: ‘I’ve got some friends at UniSA who’ve told me they’d love to have Adelaide University on their resume’. Picture: James Elsby

The University of Adelaide — Australia’s third-oldest — will begin a formal process to merge with the University of South Australia to create a “super” institution in a bid to break into the world’s top-100 rankings.

But any merger faces hurdles, including potentially from student associations and the Nat­ional Tertiary Education Union.

NTEU Adelaide president Nick Warner said staff from both universities had been caught by surprise. “In the event that a merger does go ahead, the NTEU would expect the two universities to agree to a policy of zero forced redundancies and the negotiation of a new enterprise agreement that maintains the best conditions from each university for all staff of a merged entity,” he said.

University of Adelaide chancellor Kevin Scarce and UniSA’s Jim McDowell yesterday said the universities would embark on a six-month consultation with staff, students, industry and government about merging to “create a new, leading Australian univer­sity”. Both university councils ­endorsed the move.

UniSA vice-chancellor David Lloyd and University of Adelaide vice-chancellor Peter Rathjen will oversee a joint report on a merger.

Mr Scarce and Mr McDowell said the proposal was driven by a “rapidly changing” higher education landscape, both in Australia and overseas.

They believed a new “univer­sity of scale” could deliver greater access and benefits to students, create more opportunities for staff, and enable greater collaboration and economic, social and cultural opportunities.

 

“The question of mergers ­between universities has bounced around South Australia, as it has in other states, for two decades … we should now grasp the opportunity to consider the merits of a shared future for both institutions,” they said in a joint statement, adding that a merger could place the new university within the world’s top 100.

According to the Times Higher Education’s latest index, the University of Adelaide is equal 134th globally and eighth in Australia.

UniSA, which gained univer­sity status in 1991, was ranked beyond 200 globally, but 32nd among “young universities”.

Among the University of Adelaide’s alumni are Education Minister Simon Birmingham, Defence Industries Minister Christopher Pyne and former prime minister Julia Gillard.

In 2015, Mr Pyne said: “If the University of Adelaide was to merge with the University of South Australia we would lose overnight a top-100 university in the world because they’d fall down the rankings immediately. It would take about a decade to ­recover.”

Yesterday, Senator Birmingham said the universities had “distinctive but complementary missions”. “It’s pleasing to see the universities of Adelaide and South Australia acknowledging that bold leaps may be required to deliver higher education that best serves South Australia’s future ­requirements,” he said.

South Australian Premier Steven Marshall praised the univer­sities for their “courage”.

Colin Stirling, vice-chancellor of Flinders University in Adelaide, said he was “open to new pathways” but was not involved in merger talks.

Anna-Mei Szetu, 18, a first-year University of Adelaide science student, said the merger could offset deficiencies within each university. “I’ve got some friends at UniSA who’ve told me they’d love to have Adelaide University on their resume,” she added.