Western Australia needs universities that help talented people build careers here and support an economy beyond resources. Supporters of merging UWA, Curtin and Murdoch have made those ambitions central to their case. They have yet to establish why combining the universities will deliver them.
The proposed merger has an estimated price tag of $680 million in 2025 dollars over ten years. Before committing three institutions to that expense, the government should explain what the merger itself will achieve. A new name and a larger student population tell us little about whether students will receive a better education or researchers will produce better work.
The Deloitte analysis behind the proposal puts a dollar value on substantial improvements. Its central scenario assumes that Curtin and Murdoch close half their gaps with UWA on completion rates, research expenditure per academic and tuition fees per international student. UWA’s performance stays unchanged in the model.
Those improvements generate billions of dollars in projected benefits. They were assumed rather than estimated from comparisons of past mergers with universities that stayed separate. The calculation tells us what the gains would be worth if they arrived. It does not establish that a merger will produce them.
Manchester illustrates why that distinction matters. Deloitte cites a 27 per cent increase in student numbers in the year after its 2004 merger. The calculation compares the combined university with only one of its predecessors, the Victoria University of Manchester.
It leaves out 7,615 students already enrolled at the other partner, the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology. Include both institutions in the starting count and the increase is about 2 per cent. Most of the apparent growth was the addition of students who were already there.
Even the corrected figure leaves a question unanswered. If student numbers were rising at universities that stayed separate, some of Manchester’s growth would have happened anyway. Successful universities with mergers in their histories tell us little about the value of merging unless we examine what comparable institutions achieved over the same years.
That is the comparison we make in our working paper. Our samples cover 18 mergers with enrolment data, 16 with expenditure data and 21 with publication data, mainly from Europe and the UK. We compare merged universities with similar institutions in the same country and pay particular attention to partners of broadly comparable size, as in the WA proposal.
We found no reliable evidence that merger reduced spending per student or increased research income and publications. Completion rates and first-year dropout showed no consistent improvement. International student numbers showed no clear gain. Total enrolment fell relative to comparison universities, although part of that fall reversed an increase before merger.
These findings do not settle every question about the proposed WA institution. Some measures differ from those in Deloitte’s model and we do not observe every university over the decades invoked by merger advocates. They do, however, leave the government without comparative support from our study for the improvements it is counting on.
We also examined whether savings on running costs alone would repay the estimated merger bill. Our central calculation leaves a shortfall of about $66 million after discounting future costs and savings, expressed in 2024 dollars. Some assumptions turn the result positive. Other comparison groups reduce or reverse the estimated savings. This is a partial calculation that leaves other benefits unpriced, but it gives the government little assurance that operating savings will pay for the exercise.
The business case now being prepared should compare a merger with specific improvements at the existing universities. If too many students leave without a degree, examine why they leave and what support helps them finish. If research performance falls short, identify what researchers need. The government should then assess which investment addresses each problem most effectively.
Better student support, research investment and cooperation between institutions deserve the same scrutiny as a merger. They should not have to demonstrate their benefits while a merger is credited with gains assumed in advance. Keeping three universities also leaves their staff and leaders free to work together where collaboration serves students and research.
Paying for a merger from university budgets does not make it free. Staff time spent combining systems is time committed to that task. Money spent reorganising institutions is money unavailable for other uses. The government owes students and the public an explanation of why restructuring is the best use of both.
WA should keep UWA, Curtin and Murdoch separate and pursue improvements supported by evidence. A decision of this scale needs more than confidence in how the new institution will perform in ten years. It needs a convincing account of why merging will achieve more than investing in the universities we already have. That case has not been made.
Nishant Agarwal is a Senior Lecturer and Rashid Zaman is an Associate Professor at Curtin University. Their working paper has not been peer reviewed. The views expressed are their own, not Curtin University’s.
