Australia's universities are some of the most influential public institutions in the country but a chronic lack of transparency means students and taxpayers often have no idea where their money is going or for what purpose, a report says.
A focus on profits over educational and research outcomes has fostered a lack of accountability at major universities, exemplified in the lack of detail provided by the University of Adelaide and the University of South Australia into a proposed merger of the two institutions, the Australia Institute argues.
The universities are set to tie the knot in a bid to boost student numbers, research and rankings.
But the refusal to release a business case into the merger has fuelled speculation the move is aimed mainly at increasing revenue from international students.
"Our paper isn't saying whether the merger is a good or bad thing in itself," lead researcher Morgan Harrington told AAP.
"But it's showing that the secrecy surrounding the merger is a concerning result of the corporatisation of university councils and the business-centric culture of universities across Australia."
Dr Harrington traces the trend away from transparency to Howard-era reforms that required people with commercial and financial expertise to be present on university boards.
Instead of focusing on delivering the best educational and research outcomes for the betterment of society as a whole, they are now essentially set up to maximise profits.
"The example that's probably most often pointed to is the underpayment of staff and the wage theft scandals that have happened at several really high-profile universities across Australia over the last few years," Dr Harrington said.
"That sort of penny pinching is a really good example of trying to increase profit as a focus of the university.
"It comes down to a more fundamental question about what our public universities are for."
One improvement would be amending legislation to require university councils, which make decisions about hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer funding, to publish the minutes of their meetings.
The report also recommends ensuring a majority of university council members are elected by university staff and students and are drawn from candidates with genuine expertise in education.
An SA parliamentary inquiry is due to release its report into the merger next week.
SA Deputy Premier Susan Close said the merger process had been extremely open and accountable and the universities had supplied the committee with significant documentation informing their decision.
"The only information redacted is commercially sensitive material which could be used by competitors to gain an advantage," she said.
The University of Adelaide and UniSA said they had both provided significant documentation on the matter to the public domain.
Dr Harrington said if the merger did proceed, the passage of the legislation through state parliament would provide a perfect opportunity for South Australia to lead the nation in correcting governance issues.
