Go8 pushes for more research focus in Tertiary Education Commission

The Group of Eight universities are pushing for a strong focus on research in a likely new oversight body, the Tertiary Education Commission.

The Group of Eight universities are pushing the federal government for a strong focus on research in a likely new oversight body, the Tertiary Education Commission.

The Group of Eight universities are pushing the federal government for a strong focus on research in a new oversight body, the Tertiary Education Commission, which will almost certainly be recommended in the final report of the Universities Accord review due to be released next month.

Go8 chief executive Vicki Thomson said the group, which represents Australia’s eight top research universities, believed the new body, if it was established, should be called the Tertiary Education and Research Commission. She said that putting research explicitly in the name of the new commission would focus attention on the university sector’s key research responsibilities which sit alongside its education role.

Research intensive universities have been frustrated by the Accord review’s focus on universities teaching roles and its relative lack of attention to the research side. It did not address a key wish of the Go8 universities to establish a target of 3 per cent of GDP for Australia’s total spending on research by universities, government and industry.

Ms Thomson said the task of boosting Australia’s overall investment in research required effort and co-ordination of business, industry, government and universities. “That can be a role for a Tertiary Education and Research Commission,” she said.

The Accord review has proposed that an independent Tertiary Education Commission could provide oversight to the higher education sector and advise the government on “policy and funding settings to enhance student, teaching and research outcomes”.

It suggested it could also be the pricing authority for a needs-based funding model for funding university teaching, which would adjust course funding to each university based on the degree of disadvantage of its students.

The Accord review, with its prime focus on university teaching, did not put a timeline on addressing another key university concern about research – the fact that government research grants don’t nearly cover the full cost of the projects they are meant to fund.

Nor did the Accord review address the issue of universities being forced to cross-subsidise research from student fees (particularly from international students) and government funding for teaching.

“We’ve said for many years we have a dysfunctional research funding model,” Ms Thomson said. “We know it’s not sustainable to fund research from international student fee revenue, we know we don’t fully fund the cost of research, yet we limp along in the face of that challenge.”

She said the AUKUS agreement, and recognition of the need for increased Australian sovereignty capability in key industries, argued for more investment in research.

“If there was ever a time to think about how we fund research it is now,” she said. “We understand we are in a fiscally constrained environment but it has to be a more sophisticated funding model than it currently is.”

Australian National University vice-chancellor Brian Schmidt said in the 2024 Research magazine, published in today’s paper, that his university carried out research work of “sovereign importance”. They “are really not things you want to be cross-subsidising from foreign students,” he said.

“It’s putting me and the university in a very uncomfortable position.”

Ms Thomson said the lists of top Australian researchers and research institutions in 250 fields of research which are published in the 2024 Research magazine “highlight what we have to lose if we don’t support our national research effort”.