Minister Buti has been very open with his mission: to create Australia’s largest university, a mega-WA institution of 120,000 students – 40% larger than the country’s next largest university, Monash.
Government-commissioned reports, kept secret for years, finally saw the light of day on the same Sunday afternoon that a “steering committee” to create a business plan for the mega merger was announced. This was to be the biggest shake-up WA’s university sector in decades.
A week on, the WA Government’s merger plans appear dead on arrival. Both the Greens and the Liberal Party have publicly said they don’t support the proposed mega-merger of Curtin University, Murdoch University, and the University of WA. Without either party’s support, the legislative changes required to make it happen are unlikely to pass the upper house of the WA Parliament.
Looking back on the proposed West Australian University mergers over the last two weeks, it is likely that the only thing that will come out of this will be a report titled “How not to attempt a university merger”.
The Greens oppose the merger because the proposal lacks any rational justification. It was an attempt to place a dollar value on the educational experience, without any proof that it will be in the best interests of students or staff. We believe it would have generated significant costs, job losses and waste, while creating greater complexity for students to navigate.
The key warning sign of this flawed process was that the proposed merger of Western Australian universities left out WA’s fourth public University, Edith Cowan. There was no clear rationale for this, other than the partially related fact that it had recently moved to a new Perth CBD campus, partly funded by the WA state government.
Edith Cowan University’s research and teaching performance and overall global ranking are no better than the other Western Australian universities and given the Minister claims this is one of the logics driving the merger, it is hard to understand the rationale as to why they have been left out.
It’s hard to understand – until you look at how this multi-million-dollar megamerger will be funded. Cost estimates range from $350 million to $1 billion, and the Premier has said WA taxpayers won’t fund it; instead, the universities will be forced to sell their “surplus land” for housing to fund the merger imposed on them. Edith Cohen, of course, has already handed over their now-surplus land from its former Mount Lawley campus as part of its CBD campus relocation. It makes one wonder whether this was the real reason they were left out of the megamerger.
Other alarm bells about this process include the committee reviewing the business case. The chair of that committee is a former chairman of the UWA Business School Board for more than 20 years and a professor at UWA’s finance school. The deputy chair of the steering committee is Winthrop Professor Fiona Wood of the UWA Medical School. It is no coincidence that UWA is the only university whose leadership supports the merger.
In contrast, the Vice-Chancellor (VC) of Curtin describes a proposed merger of three Western Australian universities as a “solution looking for a problem”, while the VC at Murdoch University gave Deloitte’s university merger report a fail and said that “All that a university merger will do for WA is cost a lot of time, money and energy, while reducing choices for students and alienating alumni…”.
As a Dean at Murdoch University when Deloitte last tried to improve the university, I share the VC’s fears. My experience was millions of dollars and hundreds of hours wasted, only to make the experience for students and staff worse.
The Greens WA want to support WA’s diverse public universities, with their history and uniqueness, to thrive. Distracting them with a merger will not do this.
The Greens are proud to support the Curtin, Murdoch and UWA student guilds who all oppose the merger, along with The National Union of Students (NUS) and the National Tertiary Education Union of WA (NTEU).
As the Student Guild presidents from Curtin, Dylan Storer, and Murdoch, Tshering Gyeltshen, respectively state: “Curtin is more than a name. It is our university. It is the students, staff and communities who have shaped it over generations.”
“Public money should be invested into students, staff, housing and education quality, not poured into consultants, restructures and years of disruption …”
The Greens fully agree.
Sophie McNeill is The Greens WA Education Spokesperson
Dr Brad Pettitt is The Greens WA Parliament leader
