Adelaide University merger leaves Prof David Lloyd as UniSA lone staffer on $1m salary

Just one staffer remains on the UniSA payroll – and he’s got a salary double the Prime Minister’s.

Premier Peter Malinauskas with Prof Peter Hoj and Prof David Lloyd. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Dean Martin

Only one staff member remains at the University of South Australia, vice chancellor David Lloyd on his around $1m salary, as its merger with the University of Adelaide surges forward.

Professor Lloyd told a parliamentary committee meeting on Monday that 2,767 academic staff were transferred to the new Adelaide University last Saturday.

It was also revealed in the budget and finance committee that the merged Adelaide University has a $10m a year advertising budget over three years, drawing concern from the Liberal opposition.

“Taxpayers rightly expect value for the $10m spent on advertising and it’s reasonable to ask how promoting the university locally is intended to deliver that return,” shadow minister for government accountability Ben Hood said.

The committee heard the merger, at a cost of between “$500m and $650m”, was on track to be completed so the new university could open next year.

Both Prof Lloyd and University of Adelaide vice chancellor Prof Peter Hoy, who has a similar salary around double the size of the Prime Minister’s pay packet, said concerns the merger would lead to a fall in staff numbers had not happened.

University of Adelaide staff are around 3,700 full-time equivalent staff.

“We have seen a slight increase in academic staff numbers and a slight increase in professional staff numbers, but it would be in the one per cent number,” Mr Hoy said.

“We, like the University of South Australia, have seen a decline in departures. We had at one stage feared that people would decide to find other pastures, but actually the opposite has happened for both of us”.

However there were concerns about attracting strong international student numbers after federal election campaign messages around student caps were expected to send a tremor of uncertainty through the international education sector.

Prof Lloyd said the “entire sector is perturbed about what might happen in 2026. The signals that were sent about student capping were very significant”.

“International students tend to make decisions about probability, and if they think that they are not going to get in they don’t really want to take the chance,” he said.

“We have compounded that problem in Australia by deciding to have the most expensive student visa processing fees in the English- speaking world, which means that it’s an expensive gamble for a student to take, for a non-refundable fee, to apply for a position that may be capped.”

Student visa fees were now $1,610.

University of Adelaide vice chancellor Peter Hoj. Picture Matt Turner.

Prof Hoy said without university funding changes in Australia, few universities would be viable without international students.

“In the 2022 and 2023 financial years, two-thirds of universities or thereabouts ran consecutive deficits,” Prof Hoy said about COVID years when international student numbers fell.

One of the key reasons for the merger was to make the university “more resistant to a downturn in international students”.

Originally published as Adelaide University merger leaves Prof David Lloyd as UniSA lone staffer on $1m salary