The University of Adelaide must explain why its leaders walked

Departed University of Adelaide chancellor Kevin Scarce.

The extraordinary and sudden departure of the two most senior figures at the University of Adelaide has underlined the major impact that COVID-19 is having on universities.

Chancellor Kevin Scarce walked out six months before the end of his term after an extraordinary meeting of the university’s council on Monday — which he chaired and which would have been called by him — heard the latest details of the university’s parlous financial position.

Then on Tuesday morning it was announced that vice-chancellor Peter Rathjen would be going too, on “indefinite leave”, and nobody is anticipating that he will return.

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What actually occurred, and why, is unclear. The university owes its staff and students, as well as taxpayers, a public explanation of what is going on. At the very least it must say enough to ensure that confidence in the university as an institution is maintained.

To lose two looks like carelessness and it’s not clear who in the institution, or on its council, has the vision and the influence needed to chart a way through the mess the university is now in.

For both the chancellor and the vice-chancellor to go suggests there was a majority group on the council that was strongly opposed to both of them. It’s in the public interest that deputy chancellor Catherine Branson now steps forward to explain what happened, and set forth a plan for what happens next.

Adelaide was already well known to be the financially weakest of the Group of Eight universities. It was the only Go8 university to lose money in its latest reported financial results (2018).

Peter Rathjen is on “indefinite leave”.

It also has a demographic problem — being in a low-population, low-growth state — and it doesn’t have the same links with high-earning, influential alumni, and not the same level of ties with industry and business, which other Go8 universities have. The hoped-for dividend from defence manufacturing in SA hasn’t yet happened.

Inevitably, the events of this week have sparked speculation that the merger of South Australia’s two largest universities — the University of Adelaide and UniSA — could be on again. Scarce, who is a former SA governor and before that a Royal Australian Navy rear admiral and a figure of great influence in the state, was the key mover behind the merger plan, which was announced with great fanfare two years ago.

But, after a great deal of work was put into it, it failed in late 2018 because (according to several informed people) Rathjen and UniSA vice-chancellor David Lloyd both wanted to lead the combined institution and neither would give way.

With Rathjen gone, that obstacle is no longer there. But Scarce, the merger’s biggest advocate, is no longer there either, so for this scenario to play out, other strong voices in favour of the merger need to emerge.

Its advocates believe it will achieve economies of scale and concentrate the resources needed in one institution, which could lift the ranking of the new institution into the world’s top 100.

I have always doubted that the benefits of a merger are as strong as they might seem on paper. Massive universities also have dis-economies of scale because they are cumbersome, and too often the needs of individual students and staff, who are tiny pieces of the larger whole, are lost.

Given the financial crisis universities are in, it would now be easier to force through the changes and the job losses a merger would entail, because jobs are going to be lost anyway.

But there are also costs to developing the new systems and IT platforms needed at a large university, which somebody would have to pay for. Would that be the state government?

One of the major arguments in favour of a merger was the belief that it would lead to a rise in university rankings for the combined institution because of the extra resources it could bring to bear.

However, in the short term it would undoubtedly cause a drop in rankings. And size alone would not help it claw its way back, because some of the measures used in rankings are moderated by the size of the university. So bigger is not always better in this respect.

Because of COVID-19, talk of mergers of other Australian universities is also bubbling to the surface. Most of them are ideas that have been talked about before, only to go dormant and re-emerge.

Could economies of scale be achieved by merging Charles Sturt, New England and Southern Cross, for example? Or could universities operate as systems, like the highly regarded ones in California and Texas? Another idea is to link non-research teaching institutions to research universities in a “hub-and- spoke” model.

Before any of these ideas are put into practice they need to pass the test of whether they are good for students and whether they will be more efficient. Their advocates need to show us the benefits.