Don’t rush HE mergers for financial expediency – Experts

As the universities of Greenwich and Kent press the accelerator towards creating a new ‘super-university’ through a federation model in the South East of England, a new report provides important lessons from the UK’s most significant university merger in more than a decade – which brought together a London medical school and a business-facing university in the capital.

The report, We believe this is the way to do it: Exploring the City St George’s Merger was published on 12 February 2026 by the Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) and comes as the UK government urges British higher education institutions to collaborate more – and compete less – to overcome their financial difficulties.

City, University of London, and St George’s Medical School legally merged on 1 August 2024 after two years of discussions, and the new report claims to offer “rare real-world guidance from an unusually large and high-stakes merger”, with the clear message that “integrating cultures takes time, empathy and transparency” and cannot be rushed for financial expediency.

Well-timed

The report and a webinar hosted by HEPI on 10 February looking at collaborative mergers and acquisitions in the higher education sector are well-timed, as the University of Greenwich and the University of Kent announced on 4 February that they have legally committed to merge from 1 August 2026.

Unlike the City St George’s full merger, the universities of Greenwich and Kent plan to continue operating as two distinct academic divisions within a new multi-university group, to be known as the London and South East University Group (LASEUG).

Students will continue applying to and graduating from their chosen university. However, all staff at both universities will be employed by the university group, and there will be one vice-chancellor and governing body.

Experts were divided when the Greenwich-Kent “multi-university” was first announced last September, as University World News reported, with some seeing it as a takeover of Kent, which has struggled financially, by Greenwich – one of the few higher education institutions in the UK still turning in a profit.

Lessons from school sector

During this week’s webinar, Sir Jon Coles, chief executive of United Learning, a group of nearly 100 academies and schools in both the state and independent sectors throughout England, said there were lessons for higher education from what had been achieved through secondary and primary school academies.

“We have groups of schools with common governance, and I think that sounds similar to the Greenwich-Kent (university) model being developed,” said Coles, pointing to sharing central functions such as human resources, IT, data, marketing and estates.

“Our principle is: don’t centralise unless for efficiency and to do things better. Shared resources are more efficient and put money back into education rather than spending them on administration.”

However, Coles admitted that their model involves taking over failing schools, whether they are a state school that has failed an inspection by regulator Ofsted or an independent school that is a financial mess.

“We don’t do mergers. We call them that, but we actually take over schools and run things. I think universities should adopt the same approach,” said Coles.

Other experts attending the webinar were more cautious about adopting what works for primary and secondary schools in the UK’s higher education sector.

Universities are different

Dr Diana Beech, a former government adviser on higher education policy who joined City St George’s to head up its Finsbury Institute after the merger, told University World News: “While there are lessons for universities from the school system of large academy trusts about shared services, coherent leadership and not reinventing the wheel 20 times over, we shouldn’t kid ourselves that the academy model can simply be lifted and shifted into higher education.

“Schools have a tightly defined statutory purpose, nationally prescribed curricula and a far more uniform operating model.

“Universities are nothing like that. They are autonomous institutions with very distinct missions, research cultures and, crucially, academic independence.”

The higher education regulator, the Office for Students (OfS), would anyway ban such an arrangement, at least in England, said Beech, who added that “the principle of collaboration” should, however, be encouraged – perhaps through mission groups.

“What matters is purposeful collaboration that adds value without destroying what makes each university distinctive,” said Beech.

Regulatory flexibility

Her colleague, Alex Hall, who also joined City St George’s University of London after the merger as director of governance and legal services, told University World News that “a bit of regulatory flexibility would help with flexibility of structure when it comes to (university) mergers, as would some financial support.”

Hall called for an independent broker – independent of the regulator – to help merger arrangements within the higher education sector.

“There tends to be a divergence between, on the one hand, institutional autonomy for all participants and, on the other, achieving real economies of scale.

“Could there be a structure which both allows the participants to maintain their own individual councils and senates but also achieves significant financial benefits?

“Potentially – but it's not yet permitted as a matter of regulation.

“The Kent-Greenwich structure looks like a step in that direction, but it doesn’t appear to deliver the ‘Holy Grail’ of both some institutional autonomy for each party and some economic advantage for both,” Hall said.

US shared services model

John Heniff, principal at the Huron Consulting Group, gave the perspective from the United States and told the HEPI webinar that the trend there, for the last 10 years, had been towards the shared model, mainly driven by financial pressures.

“We have roughly 60 university systems in the US and many models, but universities are increasingly centralising and moving towards shared administrative services, whether that be human resources, finance, IT or research administration.

“The best examples are the university system in California, the state university system of New York, and the university system of Georgia,” said Heniff.

Other universities participate in consortium-style shared services – legally independent institutions collaborating together to centralise their admin functions – such as the Claremont colleges in California, the Five College Consortium in Connecticut and the Trihealth consortium in Pennsylvania, Heniff told the webinar.

Recommendations

The HEPI report made a number of recommendations for senior leaders weighing options, such as shared services, deeper partnerships or full merger, and highlighted what must be in place long before legal consolidation.

These were chiefly:

• A positive and strategic logic for merging. Doing it from a position of financial trouble is an entirely different proposition.

• Agree on a set of merger principles at the start to be adhered to throughout the process, and try not to deviate from these.

• Be clear about your governance structure, both for the project and for the institution you are going to be at the end of it.

• Due diligence is fundamental.

• Deadlines are important and generate urgency.

• Get your financing in place and be clear about how much you are going to need to spend on integration.

• Do not skimp on the people needed to do professional change management, whether that's in-house or outsourcing support.

• Be sensitive to where the other party is in their journey, and never underestimate the importance of relationship-building and thinking about people as people.

• Maintain the focus on what the merger is about academically – providing more and better opportunities to deliver excellent research and education. That will motivate people even while some of the structural necessities feel painful.

Nic Mitchell is a UK-based freelance journalist and PR consultant specialising in European and international higher education. He blogs at www.delacourcommunications.com.