Students, staff rally against proposed ‘mega university’ merger plan

About 500 people, including students, academics and concerned members of the community, rallied at Western Australian Parliament in Boorloo/Perth on October 21 to oppose the shock proposal by the state Labor government to merge three major universities.

Organised by the National Union of Students (NUS) and student guilds of Curtin University, Murdoch University and the University of Western Australia (UWA), the rally came only a week after WA education minister Tony Buti unveiled details of the merger plan, which he said would allow the state’s tertiary education sector to remain “highly competitive, accessible and relevant”.

But, speaking to the crowd gathered outside Parliament, Curtin Guild President Dylan Storer said students and faculty had not been consulted. “We are not going to let you decide the future of our universities without us,” he said.

“Our universities do not belong to the government, they belong to the people of Western Australia, and we deserve a say in their future.”

The proposed merger is set to cost upwards of $1 billion. Storer said the money could be better spent addressing WA’s cost-of-living crisis, which is also having a profound impact on university students.

“New research has revealed that more than 456,000 West Australians are living in poverty: around one in six people in one of the wealthiest places on the planet,” he said.

“Students are skipping meals to afford rent and working multiple jobs just to stay at university.

“The state government has the opportunity to shelve this merger and instead invest in our students, our staff and our universities. To invest in affordable student housing, to invest in better teaching, better facilities and better student support.”

Instead of better, more-accessible education institutions, Labor has presented “a billion-dollar corporate restructure”. Storer said the state government-commissioned feasibility study is riddled with errors, likely introduced by the use of artificial intelligence.

UWA guild councillor Rojin Didari argued that the focus on corporate interests, rather than student needs, was obvious, given the language of the feasibility study, which used the words “competition” and “business” more than 100 times.

She said the plan was “about subordinating our future to the interests of the mining industry, the defence sector, militarism and AUKUS”.

National Tertiary Education Union Curtin branch president Barbara Whelan said if WA Labor was serious about addressing problems in higher education, it would call for a Senate inquiry into university governance, as has been done in NSW, or develop a statewide strategy, as the feasibility study itself had recommended.

WA Greens MLC Sophie McNeill told the rally the plan was an attempt to “erode academic independence, reduce choices in universities and entrench further the corporatisation of your education”.

She said that students and staff could not trust Buti when he said the final decision on the plan was yet to be made, because he had handpicked a steering committee full of people who support it.

An enthusiastic sentiment prevailed for much of the gathering, including chants of “the students, united, will never be defeated” and “our degrees, our say, no merger in WA”.

Liam Staltari, Liberal MP for Carine and shadow education minister, said his party also opposes the merger. He was met with anger from the crowd over the Liberals’ history of education funding cuts.

NUS WA branch president Rama Sugiartha said the NUS had also invited Labor to speak at the rally, but they refused.

“Students are asking, ‘Will my course still exist?’, ‘Will my campus still be there?’, ‘Will my lecturer still have a job next year?’, ‘Will my tutorial go from 20 people to 40?’,” Sugiartha said.

“These are not hysterical questions. And this Labor government cannot answer a single one.

“They paid their consultants to study this merger, and the consultants were told in black and white not to look at staffing, not to look at redundancies. They studied the buildings and ignored the people inside them.”

He said the “mega university” that would result from the merger would have more students per academic than any of Australia’s Group of Eight universities.