Do mergers in higher education influence student applications?

Mergers and consolidations among higher education institutions (HEIs) have become increasingly common in recent decades. In this paper, we use a Norwegian reform to examine whether mergers between HEIs affect their competitiveness in attracting prospective students. The reform reduced the number of public HEIs from 32 to 21, with many colleges gaining university status through mergers. We use a synthetic control approach to assess the impact of these mergers on student applications. We find no evidence that merged institutions attracted more applicants; if anything, applications per intake place declined slightly. These results suggest that neither expanding institutional size nor attaining university status enhanced an institution's ability to attract prospective students.