Part 6: Three university types
This is the sixth part of an eight-part essay, ‘So, You Run a University?’. This essay is authored by Darcy W.E. Allen, Chris Berg, Sinclair Davidson, Leon Gettler, Ethan Kane, Aaron M. Lane and Jason Potts. Previous parts: Part 5, Part 4, Part 3, Part 2, Part 1.
There are three possible futures for your university based on its Hart Asset. We outline these three university types in this part, but here’s a preview.
If your Hart Asset is your brand and reputation, you’re probably an elite institution. Or you’re pretending to be elite. You probably talk a lot about small exclusive clubs, endowments, legacy and prominent alumni. If your Hart Asset is a focused expertise in researching and teaching a specific area, you’re a specialised institution. Or at least that’s what you hope. You’re the world’s best in an applied domain such as engineering or a natural ecosystem. And if you don’t fall into these two categories, your Hart Asset is your administration. You have advanced and scaled administrative operators across multiple campuses. Your future is a networked university. If your administration is poor, panic. If your administration is world-leading, and you play your strategic cards right (together with the technologies we discussed in Part 4), you’re about to get much much bigger.
A new era for the university
From the early days in the 11th century to the 19th century, universities were of a particular type. They were centres of learning that matched students with scholars. They were romantic and monastic.
In the 19th century we saw the development of the industrial model in Germany and the United States. When it turned out that the frontiers of knowledge was the main driver of economic growth and development, this model spread throughout the world.
In the 20th century universities industrialised. They became massive. But they each became massive the same way. Some did it better, but each university grew to do everything. John Quiggin, an Australian economist, once said ‘There are not good universities and bad universities, there are just old universities and young universities.’[1] He’s not wrong (although that aphorism doesn’t always carry over to the schools and colleges within universities, which can be both good and bad).
We have entered a new era for universities because there are a new set of evolutionary forces. We identified these in Part 4: the COVID-19 pandemic sharply disrupted the revenue model of the industrial university, accelerating technological trajectories from automation to the coordinated adoption of digital infrastructure. But what will these forces create? Are we really entering a new era?
Our prediction is that this era will be dominated by three university types. We could call these three viable ecological niches, three avenues of speciation, three dominant designs or three archetypes. But as someone who owns and runs a big steaming-and-clanking industrial era university you don’t care about what we call them. All you need to know is that you have three strategic options before you.
Unfortunately your options are constrained by your Hart Asset. You can’t just become whatever type of university you wish. You must choose a university type that aligns with your Hart Asset. We repeat: identifying your Hart Asset is critical.
Correctly identifying your Hart Asset means that you can see the type of university you have and the strategic directions that are open to you. You can move into the new era. Misidentifying your Hart Asset will set a hopeless course. You will misunderstand the type of university you have and your strategic assets won’t provide any advantage to you.
Not even trying to identify your Hart Asset is irresponsible ignorance. You are ignoring the new era. You’ll survive for a little bit. All failed business models do. You will continue as an industrial enterprise, doing a little bit of everything, dealing with your 15 sides. But the end is near: you will be outcompeted on each margin. Now of course you might be a small regional campus, with tight political connections, and see very little possibility that technological adoption is a distant concern. Perhaps then you might survive. But you’d better be cut off from the world: make sure no technology is entering your region and that no students are leaving. Ultimately, you will fade into insignificance as these new species evolve around you.
In the next decade universities around the world will speciate into three viable forms. Those that don’t adapt to one of these forms will be broken apart and absorbed by those that do. The next decade will be the most disruptive that the global university sector has experienced in 900 years.
The Elite University
In the US legal drama Suits the New York law firm Pearson Harman only employs Harvard Law School graduates. This unconventional hiring approach provides the firm with many benefits. It has a clear understanding of the knowledge base of its associates and their work ethic. Employees are held to a known standard and employees are a relatively known quantity.
Into this world comes Mike Ross, who is not only not a Harvard graduate, but a law school dropout. Nonetheless, he is so brilliant that he earns a living by sitting the law entrance examination on behalf of prospective lawyers. Ross is a professional contract cheat (a form of cheating that has come to plague the university system in the digital environment). Ross, and his principal Harvey Specter, have to conceal the fact that he is not a Harvard graduate—despite him being a brilliant lawyer. This makes for entertaining television and the exaggeration of the real-world situation is only slight. Many “Big Law” firms rarely venture beyond top law schools when hiring new associates.
This brings us to our first university type in the new era: the Elite University. There will always be a demand for elite institutions to provide an elite education. Sometimes this education will be to children of the elite. But elite graduates are and will always be carefully selected, curated, and moulded into a very specific graduate. The Elite University provides not just a given body of knowledge (a body that may be indistinguishable from that of a self-educated contract-cheat dropout), but also intangible attributes. Graduates are accustomed to an educational and cultural milieu that others see as valuable.
If you have to ask whether you are elite, then you are not. Intuitively we all know who the elite are, but people like to rank them anyway. Both the QS World University rankings and The Times Higher Education World University Rankings provide a similar list for the very best universities in the world.[2] While individual university rankings may move around from year to year, overall the rankings are remarkably stable.[3] In 2020 eight of the top ten universities were identical across the two lists.[4] The four universities that did not overlap the two lists are all in the top 20 in both lists.[5]
What is it that makes these Elite Universities elite? They have strikingly similar characteristics. While this may simply represent an English language bias, they are all located either in the United Kingdom or the United States. Elite Universities also tend to be small. Oxford and Harvard each have just over 20,000 students. And they tend to be old. Imperial College London being the only elite university established in the 20th century. Oxford is the oldest university in the English speaking world, having been established in 1096. Harvard is the oldest university in the US, established in 1636 by the Great and General Court of the Massachusetts Bay colony. The US universities in that elite group are private universities with large endowments.
Of course there is much more to being elite than just being old and small. The University of Glasgow was established in 1451 and has just over 25,000 students. Adam Smith, the father of economics, taught there for a period of time. While it is an excellent university, it does not have the elite status of, say, an Oxford or a Harvard.
This raises an interesting question: how does one become an Elite University? This is a similar question to: how does one become a noble (i.e. some form of royalty)? Eliteness can be earned through good deeds or it can be inherited. It tends to be inherited (a true snob would argue that nobleity can only be inherited—that was certainly the view of the characters in the Suits program). Importantly, it can’t be bought. As an Elite University your reputation, brand and legacy cannot be bought and it cannot be subcontracted in.
The Elite University will survive at both the global and the regional level. The Harvards and the Oxfords are easy to understand. But many small liberal arts colleges will also survive. These institutions, like Harvard, are not just providing an academic education, they operate to provide other valuable skills and signals to potential employers or life partners or even rich parents. At a national level, institutions such as the Australian National University or the University of Melbourne, the University of Tokyo or the National University of Singapore, may survive as elite institutions. Or they may not.
Elite Universities are like exclusive brands. They are old, small universities with very strong brand recognition. They also tend to have deep pockets or large endowments. And it’s very hard to become one quickly.
The Specialist University
In the 2015 movie San Andreas the west coast of the US is threatened by earthquakes. Lawrence Heyes (played by Paul Giamatti) is a professor at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) who has discovered that even larger earthquakes are imminent. When asked if he has access to equipment that could warn the general population, he answers “This is Caltech”. Of course one of the world’s leading Specialist Universities has a particular piece of equipment.
Specialist Universities specialise. They offer courses and pursue frontier research in a much narrower field of expertise than universities. Their focus is much more specific than the typical university that dabbles in anything from the humanities to mathematics. The Hart Asset for the Specialist University is this research and teaching specialisation.
The difference between an Elite University and a Specialist University is blurry. Caltech looks both elite and specialist. They manage NASA’s legendary Jet Propulsion Lab, for instance. Caltech is best understood as a Specialist University because of its specialisation in engineering. By contrast, MIT, one of Caltech’s bitter rivals, is an Elite University. MIT is not just strong in engineering and science. It also has a world-leading architecture school, the famous MIT Media Lab, and a top MBA program at The Sloan School of Management. Because MIT could conceivably be (at least) three specialist universities it is merely an Elite University.
While many Specialist Universities have elite characteristics, they need not have them. Our own employer, RMIT University, is ranked highly for Architecture and for Blockchain. Yet we make no claim to being an Elite University. Are the many small liberal arts colleges in the US Elite Universities or Specialist Universities? Because Specialist Universities must operate on the frontiers of applied knowledge, many small elite liberal arts type institutions that don’t focus on engineering and the sciences are best understood as Elite.
One key difference with Elite Universities is that Specialist Universities also do not need to be old. You could become a Specialist University. Some existing Specialist Universities will choose to remain as stand-alone specialised universities. New specialised universities will also be created in various ways. They might emerge as spin-offs from existing universities and through mergers between specialised units of existing universities and existing specialised universities.
A Specialist University must, above all else, be specialised. It has to provide an elite level education and research output in a small range of disciples. It must have a concentration of elite-level faculty and facilities to match. It has deep connections to their relevant industry and is on the frontiers of applied knowledge. The Specialised University is mostly judged on performance and impact on the world.
The Networked University
It’s likely that you didn’t identify as Elite or Specialist. You might feel elite on some margins and specialist on others, but you don’t think that your Hart Asset is either your brand reputation or your deep applied expertise. How do you survive in this new era? Is it time to pack up the campus? No, but expect a lot of consolidation and expansion over the next decade. Many research groups and centres will be subsumed into specialist and elite institutions over time. Others will try and buy your specialist departments. What you need to become is a Networked University.
The Networked University will consist of digital networks that connect and serve multiple buildings and campuses around the world. This is something new and unfamiliar. This will be the least familiar university type in the new era. This type is enabled (and pushed) by the technological trends in Part 4. Attempts have been made to create such institutions in the past. Early prototypes of the Networked University exist (our own employer for example). But they have never really scaled to world-domination. Think of the largest university network you know. Now think much much bigger.
To understand the Networked University we must imagine a university as a supply chain. Supply chains clearly demonstrate the fundamental “make or buy” decision we introduced earlier. Firms manufacture some components of their product themselves, buy in others, subcontract some assembly, and so on. The most effective organisation of a supply chain changes over time due to shocks and technological change.
Today most universities are not supply chains. All activity takes place more or less at a central location (campus) with most, if not all, inputs owned by the university—except the faculty who are employees (whether permanent or adjunct). Few aspects are subcontracted out except the student cafeteria, cleaning services and gardening. Over time we have seen supply chains become longer, more complex and more globalised.
How do universities, like supply chains, go global? There are two ways to think about how to go global: bring the world to you, or go out to the world. The former is interesting but obvious. You can become global by attracting students from all around the world. Your reputation draws students to you. Over the past 30 years or so international student markets have grown phenomenally. Australia’s third largest pre-pandemic export was education. But of course this approach is limited by physical and other cost constraints. As we write this, bringing students to you is essentially prohibited.
The second way a university can go global is by going to students all around the world. This is where things get interesting. Some world-famous American universities, for example, teach their MBA programs in Sydney. This involves flying their world-famous professors to teach subjects in intensive mode. Similarly Australian universities offer many of their degree programs into Asia. This usually involves having a local partner (not a local university) that recruits students and acquires venues and so on. Some Australian universities have experimented with having offshore campuses. Monash for example had a campus in South Africa for many years, while RMIT University (our employer) has two campuses in Vietnam.
No university today is truly global. Partly this is because managing this second global university model is difficult and expensive. Questions are raised about the compatibility of standards across the campuses. Are the students at the “subsidiary” campus really getting the same experience? These concerns are valid because those institutions that can credibly address those concerns are more likely to survive than those that do not: Monash South Africa was eventually abandoned; RMIT Vietnam appears to be thriving.
Think about the University of California. It has ten campuses. Some of those campuses are highly ranked universities in their own right Berkeley, for example, was ranked equal 13th in the world by The Times World University Rankings in 2020.[6] A different campus of the same university was ranked between 351-400 in the same year. To be fair, the Merced campus was only established in 2005.
The University of California is not really networked in the manner we are imagining. It can be thought of as being a federation of universities—it shares a board of regents (what we would call a university council) but it does not share management practices, and each has its own reputation and brand. In essence those campuses do not have the same Hart Asset or leverage off the same Hart Asset.
Universities have not been able to expand their operations at the scale of other multinational corporations such as car manufacturers. Toyota, for instance, delivers its product to the market via a supply chain, and has full control over the supply chain. The supply chain may exist in many markets, across many different countries, and service paying customers around the world. Some vehicles may be custom produced for specific markets (in the US people drive on the right-hand side of the road, in Australia people drive on the left-hand side). Universities have never done this. And up until 2020 that global scale didn’t really matter. Until 2020 we lived in an ever increasingly globalised world where travel and international mobility was both taken for granted and became ever more affordable.
Universities can no longer be global by having students come to them. To justify a massive organisational change we need to see changes in both the demand and supply side of the market. The demand for a good quality education has not changed. But the costs of delivery of that education have changed. It is now prohibitively expensive, if not impossible, for students to attend university classes (especially if they are foreigners). This change leaves an open question of whether future consumers will want to be packed into large lecture theatres or write exams in large examination rooms. Social distancing etiquette following the pandemic might prohibit such activities. At the same time the cost of replicating classroom experiences has fallen.
Universities have both seen massive technological changes over the past millennium and have remained remarkably stable. Despite the advent of the printing press, recording technology, video technology, the internet, and MOOCS, the fact is that the basic model of educating students in 2020 is similar to 1020. Students attend lectures and tutorials. Lectures tend to occur in large classes where the lecturer usually presents material for an hour or two (with limited student imput or interaction). Tutorials tend to reinforce previously-delivered lecture material in a smaller class setting but with an emphasis on application and interactive discussion. The online classroom draws off this traditional model, with students will listen to pre-recorded lectures before attending a webinar tutorial.
Despite students (or indeed anyone) being able to buy a textbook and read it (or watch a series of Youtube clips), universities have been able to survive and even thrive in the face of extremely low-cost alternative competition. That’s because most universities do not sell access to secret knowledge. Universities are remarkably open institutions. They often give away their knowledge at close to zero cost. A student studying first year economics at an Elite University and another student at a third-rate college may use the same textbook, have similar powerpoint slides and tutorial exercises, and complete much the same assessment tasks.
The vast majority of universities (not the small number of Elite or Specialist models we described above) are providing matching and credentialing services. That is their Hart Asset. Their Hart Asset is not reputation or prestige or specialisation. The Hart Asset of many universities, and indeed the Networked University of the future, is the administrative platform that facilitates a complex multi-sided market.
Some universities have excellent matching and credentialing services. They are large, with processes and procedures that coordinate a 15-sided market at scale. Of course you could never admit this. At Open Day you do not tell parents how excellent your bureaucracy is. You will tell them about your other features such as research active faculty and industry links (both not at the level of their Elite and Specialist competitors). These are of course just marketing tactics that allow operation as a credible university (while leveraging off your Hart Asset).
Soon everything will be much more out in the open. It will have to be. The digital trajectories will bring into clear view the global Networked University, with its world-class administrative matching infrastructure. Some universities will scale like never before.
Just three types?
Basically yes. Everything else is just a variation of these archetypes. Mixed strategies will be outcompeted by pure strategies, unless there are significant barriers and stickiness or other forces. So what might those barriers be? Why might our three university theory be wrong, or take longer than we think?
People are sticky. The Elite and Specialist Universities both presume a relatively high willingness for students to go to where the university is. The growth of the university sector through the 20th century widely accommodated the industrial model. If you don’t want to move in order to go to university, perhaps because you have work or family in your town or city, that creates demand for the large, full-service local university. But the alternative model is that the university comes to you, which is what the Networked University is designed to do.
Universities are protected and funded by the government. This presents another barrier to the evolution of the industrial model. Governments have many reasons to value a large, full service, good-quality, physically imposing university. These reasons may be a mix of local politics and industrial planning. But on several important margins, this suggests adaptation toward the Specialist University model, which is compatible with the economic and regional planning agenda.
Resistance is futile but predictable. This barrier comes from within, from resistance from one or several of the 15 sides. Perhaps academics resist this change.[7] Perhaps parents or local businesses do? Perhaps undergraduate students do? But these can each be picked off at some margin, such as by rewarding specialists or lowering prices. Could they form a blocking coalition? Could mass protests stop this (remember universities pioneered protesting)? Perhaps, but the global nature of this shift makes that unsustainable.
And of course our three types model is overly simplistic. The university sector is messy and complicated. And it’s become more complicated over time with the Cambrian explosion of variety in organizational and business forms in higher education. We have seen experimentation in new types of digital and education content delivery such as MOOCS, edtech, Khan Academy, Udacity, and microcredentials. Adjacent markets such as the rise of superstar private tutoring (e.g. in Korea) have also developed and flourished. Digital markets for recommendation and matching facilitate this trend. As higher education markets have become more international we have seen the rise of private feeder colleges and private stock market listed education businesses.
But the growing richness of the market ecology of the education industry and services is simply further grist for the mill of pathways shaping into the three university types.
As the economy continues to evolve to become more knowledge intensive and complex, new types of competition, and potential partners, emerge. Many large organizations, including services and technology companies, or even governments themselves, require specific inhouse training for their workforce or new entrants. This will be somewhat idiosyncratic to their own platforms or corporate systems, so there is a certain asset specificity to these skills. But because they can also supply and certify these skills in-house, they face a ‘make or buy’ decision. Whether these organisations end up partnering with or competing with universities depends on the relative efficiency of what universities can offer. The Networked University offers a potentially considerable comparative advantage to a contractual relationship.
The Networked University facilitates unbundling of university components, with possibly substantial productivity and efficiency gains. Do tutors need to be on campus? Do we all need to do big introductory lectures? Probably not. Elite and Specialist Universities will want all of these services in-house for other purposes, but these were points of inefficiency for the full service industrial university that can be transformed by the platform university.
Despite these barriers, the competitive position of the industrial university will be eaten away. And so we enter a highly disruptive era of friendly and hostile reorganization of the university sector.
The great disruption
Our argument is that the industrial era model of the university, now about 200 years old, is collapsing and that universities will evolve into three forms: Elite, Specialist and Networked. In the next and final Part we want to explore your strategic choices in this space, whether you’re an owner or manager of a university (you’re a university President), or you’re a general custodian or funder of the entire higher education space (you’re an Education Minister). Here we look at how evolution has already happened in the university sector. The seismic activity and glaciation processes have already begun.
Consider Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A). Any corporate organization can grow in broadly two ways: continuously or in lumps. Converting investment capital into new productive capital (buildings, stock) is one way. The other way is to buy and absorb going concerns. In Australia almost every university is the product of mergers.[8] The same pattern is observed in the UK and in the US.[9] While traditionally universities have been more like territorial fiefdoms, during the industrial era mergers and acquisitions have been a common way for universities to grow, particularly as smaller specialist institutions have consolidated into larger industrial forms. Small institutions seem especially vulnerable to financial challenges and common targets for M&A activity because their fixed costs increase (and are allocated) across fewer students.
The M&A process for universities is particularly hard. Because most universities are not traded on public exchanges the gradual acquisition of an equity position or an aggressive leveraged buy-out is not an option. A university President or VC must have the full support of their board—and vice versa—to drive a successful university merger. This must be true on both sides of the transaction. Everyone must understand the imperative of the merger, the difficulties that lie ahead, and grasp the need for consistency and support. Authority, vision, and clear honest communication are crucial to successful mergers.[10]
Consolidations, alliances, affiliations, partnerships, co-ventures, and consortia are also viable alternatives to full institutional mergers or closures.[11] Partnerships can bring together complementary assets and business models, and forge alliances and co-ventures with international partners to broaden academic markets or create consortia.
Of course consolidation is challenging.[12] The costs of doing it wrong are enormous and the merger of two different institutions with two different cultures is hard and slow.[13] A common obstacle is failure of the institution’s leaders to even contemplate and explore a merger as a proactive option in their strategic planning because considering a merger signals weakness or inability to manage the existing organization.[14]
The standard arguments about the benefits of mergers in the university sector—often repeated in both the media and in faculty lounges—are that university mergers create scale economies and synergy benefits.[15] For instance cities with multiple universities with complementary interests and culture may see directed mergers as a likely way to benefit from increased scale and breadth. Merged institutions could build on the strengths of each to drive higher quality and consistency, multiplying value for teaching and learning through sustaining more comprehensive course offerings and research by enabling the benefits of concentration and collaboration in complementary disciplines. Merging institutions will create more diverse student groups with richer exchanges between international and domestic, regional and urban, privileged and disadvantaged students.
Don’t fall for it. This is not a viable forward strategy in the new era. It’s an industrial era mirage.
These old-style mergers onto a single or multi-campus larger hierarchic structure will be outcompeted by the new Networked University model that will deliver the scale economies and administrative efficiencies but without all the pain and suffering of corporate mergers and replication of all the separate pieces into an integrated whole. This strategy worked in the past, and still has relevance for building Specialist Universities, but it will not work in the future for generalist universities.
A better option is for the premerged parts to plug directly into a larger Networked University. Or better, for the viable parts (say a school or research centre) of a struggling university to modularise and break away, and plug into a Networked University.[16]
Secondary markets are already very well developed for academics and top researchers, who regularly churn through universities. There is a growing and more developed market for functional bundles of such, with research teams or whole research centres tradable. In a platform world, these markets would greatly extend to entire courses, schools or programs. This would unbundle and modularise the currently hierarchical university. The other side of this equation is the disposal of entire components of universities, such as the sale of entire campus infrastructure (much valued land and buildings). Another possibility is simply to open or start universities anew, or to undertake a significant strategic pivot—often with rebranding and renaming—to emphasise a shift into new markets.
The notion of a spin-off is unusual in the university space. Historically universities have tended to merge—more of less voluntarily or, at least, on friendly terms. The trend has been consolidation not break ups. It has happened that one university transfers a research unit to another university. The Centre for Policy Studies, for example, moved from Monash University to Victoria University. Similarly universities have sold campuses to other universities. Again, in Australia, Monash University sold two of its campuses to Federation University.
Much rarer is a large university breaking up into smaller universities. At first glance this seems extremely counter-intuitive. After all there are fixed administration costs that would have to be covered by the smaller constituent parts. It is also unclear how the gains from such a transaction could be realised and shared.
Demergers and spin-offs are regularly seen in corporate contexts. It is well-known in corporate finance that conglomerates are inefficient and corporate value can be enhanced by breaking up large inefficient firms into smaller more efficient firms. The costs of maintaining a hierarchy are significant. Corporate raiders and hard-nosed management consultants are able to earn millions by identifying inefficiencies and eliminating them. Horizontal or vertical disintegration can bring efficiencies. This mechanism functions because corporations may have publicly listed stocks on exchanges (providing management with an ever-present threat that a significant stake in the company could be acquired by a hostile third party) or in any case and are able to distribute profits to shareholders (providing management with a profit incentive given their own remuneration tends to be linked with the company’s performance). What’s more, inefficient companies that aren’t taken over and stripped down might find themselves facing insolvency where value is realised in the liquidation process (with creditors having the financial motivation).
But most universities are non-profits or public sector entities. There are no spontaneous mechanisms to distribute rewards to those managers who take on risk (perhaps reputation rather than directly financial) and realise efficiency gains. These incentives are of course a wider problem facing public sector management more generally. The notion of a “hostile” takeover in this space is entirely unknown. But should it be? We return to this discussion in the next Part.
Another form of growth and integration that has played out in industrial universities is the formation of associations and coalitions of often similar types of universities, often for marketing of political purpose. In Australia, think the Group of Eight or the Australian Technology Network. In Canada, think the U15 Group. In the UK, think the Russell Group. In the US, think the Ivy League. These are not platforms however, but network alliances to create superclusters.
The new university is an acceleration of all of these forces. This time it’s supercharged by technology disruption and global pandemic induced shifts in demand, competition, and preferences for university products. This is the shape of the great disruption. So now, let us consider how you navigate this.
Part 6 takeaways
The university sector is moving into a new era pushed by technological trends and a pandemic.
That new era will be dominated by three types of university, each of which have a different Hart Asset.
As an Elite University your Hart Asset is your brand, reputation and legacy. You’re probably small and old.
As a Specialist University your Hart Asset is a focused research and teaching expertise in a small niche area. You’re the best in the world at one specific area of frontier knowledge.
As a Network University your Hart Asset is your administration. You’re good at matching all of the sides of the university platform. This is the most unfamiliar type of university in the new era but the one that provides the greatest opportunity. You will build digital networks that connect and serve multiple buildings and campuses around the world. These will be the first truly global scaled enterprise, enabled through new technologies. Some of the other university types will use your administrative infrastructure.
The path to this three-university era will be greatly disruptive. It will be a messy process of competitive acquisitions, divestitures and spin-offs. Get ready.
References
[1] www.johnquiggin.com.
[2] These were previously the Times Higher Education–QS World University Rankings.
[3] See https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings/2020/world-ranking and https://www.topuniversities.com/qs-world-university-rankings.
[4] California Institute of Technology (CalTech), Harvard University, Imperial College London, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Stanford University, University of Cambridge, University of Chicago, and University of Oxford.
[5] Princeton University, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETC Zurich), University College London. and Yale University.
[6] https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings/2020/world-ranking.
[7] Parthenon-EY (201) explored strategies for universities to merge and build models for collaboration and cement their position as a leader in this new era of higher education. It divides universities into four categories: strong niche, large and thriving, small and at risk and large and languishing. The approach to collaboration within each group should follow a similar playbook. Institutions will take one of two pathways depending on their situation: they are either pursuing collaboration out of survival or taking advantage of an opportunity. According to a survey Parthenon-EY conducted of 38 institutional leaders the toughest barrier to overcome is pushback from internal stakeholders in the process. This means universities need to lay the groundwork for collaboration and be sure internal priorities are realigned and various constituencies (trustees, faculty, alumni) understand the need to collaborate before you offer up potential models and partners. See Parthenon-EY 2016 ‘Strength in numbers’ Parthenon-EY.
[8] Gordon Technical College and Geelong Teachers’ College merge to become Deakin University. RMIT merges with Phillip Institute of Technology to become RMIT University. University of Adelaide and the University of South Australia merge to create UniSA. State College of Victoria at Burwood, Rusden, Toorak and the Prahran College of Advanced Education merge to create Victoria College. Victoria College merges with Deakin. Warrnambool Institute of Advanced Education merges with Deakin University. Kuring-gai College of Advanced Education and the Institute of Technical and Adult Teacher Education of the Sydney College of Advanced Education merge into UTS. Caulfield Institute of Technology merges with SCV Frankston to become Chisholm Institute of Technology. Chisholm Institute of Technology merges with Monash University.
[9] United Kingdom: New University of Ulster merges with Ulster Polytechnic to form Ulster University. There have been mergers between colleges of the University of London, of particular note is the merger of Royal Holloway College and Bedford College in 1985 by Act of Parliament. Cardiff University merges with the University of Wales Institute of Science and Technology and then re-merges with University of Wales College of Medicine. Victoria University of Manchester merges with University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology to form the University of Manchester. London Guildhall University merges with the University of North London to form London Metropolitan University. University of Glamorgan and University of Wales Newport merge to form the University of South Wales.
United States: Merger of Southern University and Birmingham College creates Birmingham Southern College. Carnegie Institute of Technology merges with Mellon Institute of Industrial Research to form Carnegie Mellon University. Cornell University absorbs New York Hospital Training School for Nurses. University of Cincinnati absorbs Medical College of Ohio; Cincinnati Law School, Cincinnati College of Pharmacy and Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. Harvard University merges with Radcliffe College. Miami University absorbs Oxford College of Music and Art and Western College. New York University acquires Bellevue Hospital Medical College, New York College of Dentistry and Polytechnic University. Purdue University acquires Kaplan University. Thomas Jefferson University merges with Philadelphia University.
[10] Azzis et al. (2019) found that successful higher education mergers have decision makers that were already managing the institution well while proactively managing the merger process. See Azziz R, Hentschke GC, Jacobs LA and Jacobs BC 2019, Strategic Mergers In Higher Education, John Hopkins University Press.
Azzis et al (2017) argue that successful mergers require (i) a compelling unifying vision and set of common values; (ii) a committed and understanding governing body; (iii) the right leadership; (iv) an appropriate sense of urgency; (v) a strong project management system; (vi) a robust and redundant communication plan; and (vii) sufficient dedicated resources. “It may take as much as a decade to determine whether a merger can be considered a “success,” and even then, success may be in the eye of the beholder.” See Azziz, R., Hentschke, G.C., Jacobs, B.C., Jacobs, L.A., Ladd, H. 2017. Mergers in higher education: A proactive strategy to a better future?’, TIAA Institute.
[11] Martin J and Samuels JE. 2017, Consolidating Colleges and Merging Universities: New Strategies for Higher Education Leaders, John Hopkins University Press.
[12] Bain & Company reported in 2012 that one-third of colleges in the United States had “unworkable and unsustainable business models”.
[13] Ludlow M 2019, ‘University mergers no silver bullet to compete globally’, Australian Financial Review.
[14] Ricardo A, Jacobs LA and Haven L. 2020. ‘A Merger Can Save Your College, but Don’t Wait Too Long’, The Chronicle of Higher Education.
[15] Lacy WB, Croucher G, Brett A and Mueller R. 2017. ‘Australian Universities at a Crossroads: Insights from Their Leaders and Implications for the Future’, UC Berkeley Center of Studies in Higher Education and the University of Melbourne Centre for the Study of Higher Education.
[16] (In the same way that in the 1980s and 1990s a good loan book could exit an old regional bank and get acquired by a big consolidated bank.)