The WA Government’s case for merging three public unis has commonsense appeal of the cut costs to increase efficiency kind, as appeared to happen in Euro and UK mergers.
But Nishant Agarwal and Rashid Zaman (both Curtin U, one of the universities targeted for the proposed merger) have analysed the local assumptions and international merger outcomes, compared to control universities that did not merge for 18 mergers with enrolment data, 16 with financial information and 21 with publication numbers.
They report outcomes that did not deliver the optimistic outcomes the WA Government expects from merging, Curtin U, Murdoch U and U WA.
They found:
- No “robust effect of merger on:” expenditure per student, surplus per student, research income, publications, share of hi-ci publications, completion rates or first-year dropout.
- enrolments declined compared to control universities
- merged universities did not increase international enrolments
- And on the basis of a bunch of crunched numbers they conclude their findings are consistent with English mergers, that savings from mergers are possible and there can be “stronger academic programmes” but that they are “costly and disruptive.”
Overall they are critical of previous research, including by consultants Deloitte, that makes the merger case. Thus Agarwal and Zarman in-part warn; - benefits are “set by assumed catchup percentages” not estimated on actual merger outcomes
- no control comparison for merger outcomes
- ”voluntary by-in is named as a condition of success but not tested.”
Overall, they are critical of Deloitte’s report to the government, at both micro but and macro-methodology levels
“Deloitte sets the benefits by assumption: it assumes that, after the merger, Curtin and Murdoch close 50 per cent of the gap between their performance and that of UWA on three measures, namely undergraduate and postgraduate completion rates, research expenditure per academic, and tuition fees per international student,” they write.
“It supports these assumptions with before-and-after changes at merged universities.”
And so they argue, “the business case now in preparation should test its completion assumptions against past mergers, measure every benefit against universities that did not merge, and state the evidence for each benefit before the government commits to a merger whose costs Deloitte puts at $680 million.”