University research funding: We must reward future excellence, not past success
Updated
It's no surprise that our leading universities are looking for spare change anywhere they can. But the Group of Eight's recommendations for research funding are an exercise in lazy self-interest, writes Jun Tong.
This week, Australia's most prestigious universities said that government funding for research training should be redirected to institutions conducting "world standard" research.
They argued that taxpayer funds should be targeted at high-performing institutions.
If you're not familiar with the research sector, think of this as a group of (eight) kids kicking sand into the eyes of other, smaller children. The sand-kickers are our sandstone universities; the children are our smaller and younger institutions.
It's a poor analogy and not nearly as catchy as the one Vicki Thomson - chief executive of the Group of Eight (Go8) universities - used to support her argument:
Instead of an egalitarian, "every child gets a prize" approach we should be funding excellence. You wouldn't fund a mediocre sportsperson in the hope that they can go on to win a gold medal. The AIS takes athletes and invests in them because they believe they can be excellent. That's the approach we should take to research.
The Go8 uses the Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) rankings as their measure of what constitutes "world standard" research. These rankings score - among various things - the research output, research income, and patents generated from each field of study within a university. It's a useful way to gauge performance but managers of universities are increasingly relying on these types of metrics as the only measure of worthy research.
ERA rankings and its ilk can be gamed and they fail to take into account other attributes of research that we don't value enough. Is a study that receives few citations automatically not "world standard" research?
Ms Thomson described the current approach as one that is "egalitarian", saying "every child gets a prize". This is incorrect. Ms Thomson is suggesting that the child who has won in the past should get a head start in the future. To alter Ms Thomson's analogy, she would have the South Sydney Rabbitohs awarded more money and a few bonus competition points at the start of each season simply because they have won the most premierships in the past.
Many in the research world will recognise the Go8's recommendations are an exercise in lazy self-interest. If these recommendations are implemented, we will be funding past success, not future excellence. These targets are aimed at institutions, not individual researchers.
Sure, universities that are large and have done well in the past are more likely to produce the goods than universities that are small and young. But such dogma entirely ignores the fact that there are good things in mediocre places. There are many outstanding researchers in middling institutions and to cut their access to valuable funding is achieving what, exactly?
Taking money from small universities and giving it to the Go8 simply perpetuates existing structures that favour old and prestigious institutions. It would severely hamper the ability of new institutions to foster new, innovative research groups; especially as the pool of funding in question is for PhD and Masters students - the lifeblood of any burgeoning research group.
This funding is particularly important in young institutions. This isn't a case of "every child gets a prize" as Ms Thomson claims. Substitute "prize" for "meal" and we're closer to the truth. Can we justify starving bright young researchers of resources to do their work because their institutions don't have a history of research excellence?
Ultimately, the Go8 is looking after their own. And who can blame them? Starved of federal funding and unable to deregulate their fees to raise their revenue, it's no surprise that our leading universities are looking for spare change anywhere they can. The goal, of course, is to stay competitive in those all-important rankings.
The obvious solution that no one seems to be bothering with is to - as politicians are so fond of saying - "grow the pie". It's a simple and blunt treatment that we need: more funding. We spend far less money on research and development than the OECD average.
In 2013, the Scandinavian countries, the United States, the Netherlands, Japan, France, Germany, New Zealand, and a fair few others spent more money on research and development as a percentage of their GDP than we did. There is the developed world, daylight, then us. This is the elephant in the room that no one seems to be addressing. We pay peanuts.
Trumpeting the importance of research is an easy way for Malcolm Turnbull to appear as a forward-thinking, innovative Prime Minister. Finding the courage to fund it is another matter entirely.
Governments of all stripes have found the research sector to be an easy source of budgetary savings but this will cost us. Important institutions like the CSIRO and the Australian Research Council have already been reduced to smouldering wrecks. We do this to ourselves full well in the knowledge that money spent in research today will return manifold in the future - it remains one of the most reliable means of investment.
An innovative economy is costly, but the benefits of an inclusive and diverse research community are well worth the price.
Jun Tong is a PhD student in biology at the University of Sydney. Follow him on Twitter @kj_ton.
Topics: university-and-further-education, education, research, research-organisations
First posted
