Tough choices need to be made in research funding for universities

Tough choices need to be made in research funding.

The interesting thing about the review of the Australian Research Council, whose report was released last week, is that Education Minister Jason Clare commissioned it from a panel entirely composed of people currently working in senior positions in universities.

Its chair was a scientist, Margaret Sheil, currently vice-chancellor of the Queensland University of Technology and a former chief executive of the ARC. Also on the panel were Susan Dodds, a philosopher who is currently senior deputy vice-chancellor at La Trobe University, and Mark Hutchinson, an eminent biomedical researcher at the University of Adelaide.

It was a review of the funding agency – which allocates more than $800m a year to researchers outside the medical and health fields – by the people who receive the grants. That’s probably not the best way to construct a review. The danger is that its findings come to be regarded as a submission to the minister from universities, rather than a review that reflects input from a full range of views.

This observation is not a reflection on the review’s findings which did address what I believe was the key issue affecting the performance of the ARC in recent years – the fact it was far too exposed to political influence.

This was evident in the repeated interventions by Coalition ministers – in the Howard, Turnbull and Morrison governments – to overturn grant recommendations in the humanities, usually to stoke the culture wars. In other ways the ARC was also – because of the way it was established in legislation – lacking necessary independence. This was all too obvious in its regular appearances before Senate estimates committees when its officers regularly tied themselves in knots to accommodate their duty to univer­sity researchers with their direct responsibility to their minister.

The panel’s recommendation to set up an ARC board (appointed by the minister) to which the chief executive is responsible is a good move for healthy governance. The board, rather than the minister, will also be the final approver for ARC grants except in cases where there are national security concerns.

Another key recommendation made by the panel was to discontinue the long-running research assessment exercise, Excellence in Research for Australia, which rated every university against world standards in all research area. It has run periodically for 15 years, consuming an increasing amount of resources. It also spawned an offshoot, the Engagement and Impact Assessment, an equally burdensome exercise supposed to measure the more general outcomes of research for industry and the community.

It is a good idea to move on from these two programs, which were expensive and ultimately subjective.

Clare has not yet responded to the ARC review recommendations and it makes sense not to until he receives the major higher education review he has commissioned for his planned Universities Accord. Research is part of the Accord review and he will be under pressure to find ways to make Australia’s limited research dollars go further.

That will inevitably involve prioritisation, and a third review currently under way, of Australia’s national science and research priorities by Chief Scientist Cathy Foley, will also have something to say about this.

Inevitably, tough decisions will have to be faced up to. Public funding dollars – not just from the ARC but also from the National Health and Medical Research Council and commonwealth “block” grants – will need to be focused on the projects that are regarded as top priorities. If the job is done properly, hard choices will be made and there will be universities and research programs that lose out.