Secure grants or you're likely to publish and perish

UNIS chase academics who bring in funding rather than those with a research record.

PUBLISH or perish. That's the adage often used to describe the challenges within academe. However, increasingly grants matter more than research publications.

If faced with a binary choice, most university administrators would prefer their academics secured large grants - with moderate publishing output - over and above minimal grants with high publishing output.

In other words, productivity is not the driving goal for modern academe in this country, at least not productive publishing.

The antidote, as is so often the case, is more funding so that grants aren't needed by universities to fill existing funding gaps.

Of course, in many cases grants do lead to publishing outcomes. But not necessarily of a greater quality or quantum, certainly not across disciplines. Filling out grant applications takes time and the funds are often used for a wide range of self-justifying endeavours. And given most grant applications fail, there are many academics who spend their time on a merry-go-round to nowhere, instead of improving their publishing outputs and contributing to the pool of knowledge in their field.

The reason universities want their scholars to win grants more than they want them to publish is very simple.

Grants provide high levels of funding, sometimes to the tune of millions of dollars.

They allow academics to hire teams of researchers, which enlarge the empires of heads of school, deans and vice-chancellors.

The hiring of people using grant money allows PhD students to be employed as researchers (which used to happen in the ordinary course of events before funding was squeezed). It also allows recent PhD graduates to remain within the university system working on large projects instead of being lost to public or private practice.

Importantly, universities take a cut to administer grants that are brought in by scholars, which helps already tight budgets stretch that little bit further.

It has become a de facto method for departments to boost their funding and staff.

While it isn't always the case, when academics are being hired those on the selection panel are often looking out for a track record of successful grant applications more than high rates of publishing (or track records as quality teachers).

Of course, universities want the triumvirate if they can get it. But if they are forced to choose between candidates with one strength out of the three, successful getting of grants usually wins out.

None of this is the fault of the heads of school, the deans or even the VCs.

It is the fault of government, which continues to demand our universities compete on the world stage, all the while expecting scholars within the system to waste time applying rather than researching.

There are real question marks over whether chasing grants should be the default setting across all disciplines.

As long as the application process doesn't become part of a scholar's output when filling out their workload forms, academics will be encouraged to keep on publishing lest they perish. Surely that is a lesser of evils approach?

Peter van Onselen is a Winthrop professor at the University of Western Australia.