Chaotic new uni that few wanted may be a blueprint for future
As of January, the University of Adelaide and the University of South Australia disappear. In their place will be the brand-new Adelaide University, taking over all their assets, resources and people. As in all their people – there is a ban on economy of scale forced redundancies to mid-2027.
While thousands of staff have worked above and beyond to make it happen, most still would prefer the way things were; a new university was never a popular cause on either existing campus. Adelaide University has one founder, now South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas, who started talking about merging the states’ universities while in opposition. When he won government in 2023, he told these two to get on with it or watch while a new government commission did it for, and to, them.
Flinders, the state’s third public university, asked politely to be excused and got away with it, perhaps because it is in Adelaide’s distant south while the other two are in the deadset centre of town, where international students like to hang out.
The original three-stage plan was originally about them. It still partly is. The objective is to make the state richer by increasing the number of international students paying to study in Adelaide. They already do – education has been the state’s top export since 2020.
The way to attract more of them is to lift the state’s profile on the international rankings consulted by students looking for somewhere to study in Australia and spruiked by the sales agents they consult. And the way to do that is to increase research output, which pushes them up the rankings. And the way to do that is to make a bigger university with more researchers, pumping out more research that more academics rate.
It was an improvement on previous merger discussions, which always looked like an establishment Adelaide takeover of Uni SA which had its origins in the tech-teaching institute system, more than TAFE, less than universities.
And while staff comfortable in the cultures of their university wanted to be left alone, the opposition was stronger at Adelaide, one of Australia’s originals.
Staff and graduates there argued it would dilute its research reputation, although they never mentioned it was already too small to compete against the output of the east coast Big Five (Sydney, Melbourne, Queensland, Monash and the University of NSW).
Former Uni Adelaide V-C Warren Bennington led a different charge, arguing that what Australia did not need was another monster university with 70,000 students, that smaller institutions with specific mission-intensive programs were the go.
But the Premier would not be pushed from his plan and it passed parliament, with not much crossbench concern in the upper house. And he has committed $460m to make it work – including $30m for marketing to international students, funding for research and $114m in cash from buying redundant property.
But there was a problem – international student numbers got caught up in the immigration-housing debate before last year’s federal election and all of a sudden growing them was (still is) a political problem. It may not look like a big problem for South Australia, which had 45,000 international student residents in August, compared to 305,0000 in NSW.
Adelaide is a small town and international students are the biggest block of renters in the CBD and surrounds, where the merging unis are. More international students stopped being talked about.
But there is no turning back, because the two leaders of the project, present vice-chancellors Peter Hoj (Adelaide) and David Lloyd (SA) seized the opportunity the Premier provided. They have planned a new, not a merged, university, although staff at both still think it is a takeover by the other. It will have a new curriculum, a learning model that suits the times – something set-in-their-ways universities will not or cannot do.
For a start, they have reduced courses from 8000 at both now to 5000 next year. There will be a stackable degree structure using self-contained modules that are also offered separately. There will also be generic core courses across almost all undergraduate courses from AI to ethics, First Nations knowledge to “intercultural understanding”.
And the new university will build on Uni SA’s experience in digital delivery and online study.
Close curriculum watchers say it will not be a big-selling point in the international market, but there is a sense it will adapt the university model to emerging ways in learning, designed for people who do not allocate three years for full-time study and that is it for education across their working lives.
If it works. Just months before students arrive, academic and professional staff on the ground say the process is a shambles, that management has attempted too much too soon, that they are frightened of what will happen when students turn up. And everybody is very tired indeed – there is no doubting hundreds, probably thousands, of people have worked very hard, very quickly to turn management’s big picture into detailed plans for learning and teaching, research and service.
Plus, there have been (still are) anger and argument over how to get the work done and disputes over pay, conditions and workloads as the two existing and immensely complex enterprise agreements are transformed into a new one. The SA branch of the National Tertiary Education is perhaps the most tenacious in the country and has not backed off fights for its member. A new university staff agreement is due for completion by Christmas; it is not yet settled. The union is pragmatic and it did not work to block the new university from first principle.
Certainly, Uni Adelaide will open for staff and students in the new year but the first thing inaugural vice-chancellor Nicola Phillips (moving from the University of Melbourne) will face will be a press-load of bad media as timetables malfunction, existing students complain their courses are changed and staff say nothing works as it should.
Revenue will likely dip for a couple of years as kinks in cost and student support are ironed out. Yet observers of the process from the start predict it will work out, because everybody knows it has to. And by 2030, the new university will have 70,000 students, 31 per cent of them internationals – 3 per cent more than the total for both now. Assuming, of course the national government does not tighten visas. If everything works, Adelaide University will be a $2.2bn annual operation and if there is a 3 per cent annual operating margin, it will have $66m to invest. This will be a big opportunity: universities with creativity, cash and courage can grow without demanding more money from Canberra. Monash University has just announced it will build a second $1bn campus in Kuala Lumpur with a 22,000-student target.
If Adelaide University follows the Uni SA partnership with global professional services provider Accenture, the new university will expand in online courses, taking Adelaide University to the country and beyond, rather than just bringing more students to Adelaide.
This may not be what Malinauskas had in mind but if it works, it will lift SA in the national and maybe international leagues.
Beware revolt of overeducated and underemployed
We are about to get a new Australian university that nobody much wanted when it was announced. Nobody now is talking much about the reason for creating it. But while the people involved in its creation from top to bottom are exhausted, it will be a huge achievement if it works, showing universities can do new things.