Merging universities does not necessarily result in an uptick in student applications, has found.

Initiated in?2015, the country has implemented structural?changes?with the goal of improving research and teaching quality across a more ¡°robust¡± higher education system. It prompted a series of institutional mergers, cutting the number of public higher education institutions by a third while seeing some university colleges gain full university status.

As part of a larger research project funded by the Research Council of Norway, researchers from the Nordic Institute for Studies of Innovation, Research and Education (NIFU) analysed the impact of these mergers, finding that the resulting institutions did not attract more applicants.

To determine the impact, co-author Vegard Wiborg told ÌÇÐÄVlog, the researchers ¡°created an average ¡®control group¡¯ made up of non-merged institutions that resembled the merged ones before the 2015 reform¡±.

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¡°Since this control group resembled the merged institutions in terms of applications in the pre-reform period, we analysed the impact of the reform by studying how the two developed in the years following the mergers,¡± he said.

¡°We would not have been surprised to find a positive effect, since gaining university status and promises of higher quality could, in theory, make institutions more appealing to prospective students,¡± Wiborg noted. Instead, ¡°we did not find evidence that merged institutions attracted more applicants after the mergers¡±.

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The specific type of merger ¨C whether two university colleges combined, for instance, or whether a college merged with a university ¨C did not impact application rates either, the authors found. ¡°In other words, gaining university status or becoming part of a larger institution did not seem to influence student applications much in the four to five years after the reform,¡± Wiborg said.

The study does not offer a comprehensive assessment of the reform¡¯s impact, he stressed: ¡°We haven¡¯t looked at educational quality, student outcomes or other long-term effects.¡±

Moreover, the mergers could positively impact application numbers in years to come. ¡°It¡¯s understandable that the effects might take time to show,¡± he said. ¡°Mergers are complex, often costly processes that require significant reorganisation which might delay the potential benefits.¡±

Alternatively, Wiborg posited, ¡°it could be that students perceive such changes as disruptive. If the mergers eventually lead to noticeable improvements in education quality, we might see different patterns over a longer period.¡±

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Nevertheless, the study findings could be relevant to other national higher education systems pursuing reform, he said, ¡°especially in other systems with a large public higher education sector¡±.

¡°Mergers do not automatically seem to boost perceptions of educational quality, at least not in the short run,¡± Wiborg said. ¡°And in Norway¡¯s system, where institutions are primarily publicly funded, the ¡®university¡¯ label might carry less weight than in more market-oriented systems.¡±

emily.dixon@timeshighereducation.com