“Mergers, it seems, are a bit like sharks, when you least expect it, they come swimming back to bite you,” Uni SA VC David Lloyd on new uni amalgamation speculation

But there’s only one species in the Torrens River the Great White Takeover, which wants to devour Uni Adelaide or Uni SA, depending on who you fish wish.

Sightings of the monster are regularly reported every few months but it hasn’t even looked like devouring a vice chancellor since 2018 talks between the two unis failed.

Professor Lloyd has long-suggested frying far bigger fish – creating an SA post-school system made up of two universities integrated with training (CMM yesterday). But not now. “Nothing is being explored, nothing is ‘afoot,’ he told UA staff yesterday, in response to press reports.

And as for bolting unis SA and Adelaide together, “In 2018 the exploration of the merit of merger played out on the public stage as never before, but it was the economics of the proposed model that put pay to its progression – not egos, not grandstanding – simply the inability of the business case to stack up,” he said.