JCU vice-chancellor Simon Biggs is the new chair of the IRU group

James Cook University vice-chancellor Simon Biggs is the new chair of the seven member Innovative Research Universities group.

James Cook University vice-chancellor Simon Biggs is the new chair of the Innovative Research Universities group. Photo: Cameron Laird.

James Cook University vice-chancellor Simon Biggs is the new chair of the seven-member Innovative Research Universities group, and will lead it for the next two years through the period of major policy change expected from the federal government’s Universities Accord review.

Professor Biggs said the key issue Accord final report, to be released by Education Minister Jason Clare later this month, would be its proposals for funding universities.

“In the end, whether we like it or not, it all comes down to what’s the resource we have available to do the job we want to do,” he said.

In its submission for the 2024-25 federal budget the IRU has argued that the changes to university fees introduced by the Morrison government – which led to about a quarter of students paying $16,323 in annual tuition fees, while another quarter pay only $4,445 – are urgently needed.

“I think the IRU universities would probably argue that it (the Morrison government’s higher education package) hasn’t necessarily achieved what it set out to achieve,” he said.

Professor Biggs said reform was also needed to the government’s research block grant program to because the value of the money was being eroded to support university research funded from multiple sources.

He said that the block grants, which were designed to pay for the indirect costs of research, should be limited to support only research funding which came from the education portfolio, for example Australian Research Council projects.

Professor Biggs said that new sources of funding, for example from the Medical Research Future Fund, had “expanded the pool of available research funds but not expanded the research block grant”.

Professor Biggs said that fact that the IRU represented a group of universities with a high level of diversity was one of its strengths. Its seven members are spread across both capital cities and regional centres.

“The nice thing about the IRU as a group is we’re not a one-size-fits-all group of universities,” Professor Biggs said.

Its capital city institutions include the large Western Sydney University and Griffith University, the medium size La Trobe University and the smaller Flinders University, Murdoch University and the University of Canberra. It also has Professor Biggs’ own regional institution, James Cook University, in far north Queensland.

“I would argue that’s probably a strength of the IRU that we can test ideas from a wide variety of viewpoints,” he said. “There are lots of things that join us and connect us, but there are important things that differentiate us.”

For example, Professor Biggs said that what was important to him as the vice-chancellor of a smaller university “looks entirely different to the vice-chancellor of Western Sydney University”.

Because it was a small university grouping the IRU could have the “robust conversations” that lead to the formation of a common view on policy, he said.