WA Chief Scientist Peter Klinken is talking up his plan for a single state public university again – the Perth establishment is listening

Writing in the West Australian newspaper yesterday Professor Klinken renewed his call for one big uni by merging the four public institutions. A news story about it was on page one.

Professor Klinken proposed one big u to a state parliament committee and it was raised in the House in September (CMM September 20 and 21). The idea is that the OBU would have sufficient scale to be a world top 50 on research rankings, which would increase demand from international students, thus generating more money for research, (CMM September 20). The four public unis variously no-commented or dismissed the idea back then, but they may want to expand now on why it is a bad idea – Premier McGowan was on to the issue quick-smart yesterday, saying he would cnsider a proposal.

And if anybody wants to present one there’s encouraging news this morning. In Features, Nicholas Fisk and Daniel Owens report UNSW’s Aggregate Ranking of Top Universities, including a big performance of Paris-Saclay University, up year on year from 141 to 68. It was created in 2019, combining University of Paris-Sud (rank 153) (with four grande écoles including CentraleSupélec (346th)) and ENS Paris-Saclay (418th).