Ego ‘played no part’ in merger plan failure

University of South Australia’s David Lloyd has rejected reports about reasons behind the failure of talks with Adelaide University.

‘Don’t believe everything you read in the newspapers,’ says University of South Australia vice-chancellor David Lloyd. Picture: Kelly Barnes.

University of South Australia vice-chancellor David Lloyd has hit back at reports that the controversial merger proposal between his institution and the University of Adelaide foundered because he had insisted on being the head of the new institution.

In a speech to last week’s Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency conference Professor Lloyd said, regarding the merger, “don’t believe everything you read in the newspapers”.

“For those who would like the inside track, it — the UniSA-Adelaide merger — didn’t happen for a lot of reasons, all of them significant, and absolutely none of them linked to ego or position jockeying,” he said.

His statement rejects a view stated by close observers of the merger debate that the main reason the University of SA pulled out of merger talks a month ago was that Professor Lloyd would not budge in his determination to be vice-chancellor of the merged institution.

In his speech to the TEQSA conference Professor Lloyd said that his university council had taken “a long, hard objective view”, weighed its analysis against the strategic risks and “concluded there was not a compelling case to support a merger”.

Its analysis included preparing an interim business case and taking account of other factors such as external branding, ranking agency reports and hundreds of public submissions, he said.

“These data, the associated cost projections and models, the risk profile arising from key assumptions made and the status of considerations such as timelines for delivery, transition arrangements, and proposals related to the subsequent governance, leadership, mission and values of any merged institution were all examined through the lens of cost-benefit at institutional, state and national levels,” he said.

However, Professor Lloyd declined to disclose the detailed reasons why his university pulled out of the merger. He said the decision did not need to be explained in fine detail.

“It’s not the job of the governing body to re-present detailed business cases for re-debate and public interrogation,” he said.

One of the stated reasons for a merger which the universities identified in a joint statement in June was the possibility of an improvement in university rankings for the joint institution.

However, Professor Lloyd noted in this speech that in the Times Higher Education world rankings the University of SA was currently 10th in Australia and the University of Adelaide was eighth. “Had a merger been enacted, after expending a very significant amount of money to achieve the outcome … it would still be No 8,” he said.

Professor Lloyd said that university mergers could be desirable in certain circumstances.

“Undoubtedly we face a future where amalgamations must still be countenanced, not least because more than one in eight of Australia’s universities ran a deficit last year,” he said.

“Having said that, I do not suggest that mergers are appropriate mechanisms to enable digging one’s way out of a financial hole or holes, but they are certainly mechanisms to enable contemplation of a radical readjustment of the status quo of your business.

“The take-home lesson is that university mergers are very ­expensive and complicated under­takings and if you’re not going to get them absolutely right and fully geared for the benefit of all concerned, taking into account community, cultural and collateral matters, you shouldn’t attempt them,” Professor Lloyd said.