About fifteen months ago, I wrote that the next big thing in cross-border higher education was going to be an actual merger of two institutions, in different countries.  Now, we have a real live experiment to watch, thanks to the Monash-Warwick Alliance.

This didn’t get a lot of press when it was announced (I certainly missed it), but it’s a reasonably big deal nonetheless.  In a nutshell, these two large, young  universities (Monash dates from 1958, Warwick from 1964), with excellent research profiles, have decided to join forces in quite a unique way.  They’re not just doing easy stuff like joint degrees; the unique aspect is that it’s bringing alliance strategy down to the departmental level: joint research teams are being assembled, research platforms are being shared to make infrastructure money go further, and joint professors are being appointed (six so far in the chemistry departments).   The duo seem likely to start moving towards a global brand, building on Monash’s already-aggressive international profile (campuses in Italy, Malaysia, and South Africa, and joint venture programs in India and China), and they’ve even appointed a joint vice-President to get them there.

What’s behind all this?  Well, it seems the two schools’ Presidents, Ed Byrne and Nigel Thrift, share a somewhat apocalyptic view of higher education’s future.  In a joint message issued at the time of the tie-up, the two say they see higher education institutions being stratified into four groups: at the top, maybe 30 institutions with such prestigious research and teaching reputations that they will simply be invited to set up boutique operations in host countries at no cost (e.g. Yale-Singapore); and, at the bottom, thousands upon thousands of institutions that will just do “mass teaching”.  In between will only be small, specialist niche institutions such as liberal arts colleges, and about 50 (of what they call) “globally networked, research-heavy university systems”.  This tie-up is designed to ensure that not only are Monash and Warwick secured places in that group of 50, but also that they will be considered as leaders in the field.

This view may underestimate the degree to which national governments, for reasons of prestige, if nothing else, will keep “national research champions” afloat.  But the alliance model certainly seems much more promising than some of the university network and consortia models, such as Universitas 21, the Matariki Network, and the WC2 University Network, which are a bit heavier on chat than on action.  Even if the Byrne-Thrift prediction is wrong, Monash-Warwick may turn out to be a model to follow simply because it offers a relatively clear and simple path towards a global brand.

Waterloo-Teknion, anyone?  UBC – National University of Singapore?  It could get interesting.