I have friends who have attended all of these schools and received quality educations. As a graduate of UA, I wish the education I received was substantially better but there's really little or no objective evidence to support this conclusion. Where there are areas where a school is better than the others, it is program specific (e.g. Akron and engineering) as opposed to across the board quality of education.
These schools need not merge but need to look to areas of consolidation and cooperation where they can save money, such as supplies, human resources...