Managing Director | Strategy Consulting to Research Organisations | Driving Outcomes in Australian Research |Top 1% higher education sales professionals on LinkedIn
Who loses in the competition for Category 1 ARC/NHMRC research funding? Here's a perspective based on 10 years of data. First, it's impossible to say how much effort is put into competing for this funding every year by universities - you need to account for the grant writing, the support staff and services, the IT infrastructure and systems, the bureaucracies of approval and more. Suffice it to say, it's a lot. And it makes sense - this is the main game in town for funding researchers' projects. But what does all this competition achieve? Here are some observations from looking across the data from 2013-2022: - The highest institutional average improvement in share of total grants across the period is 0.33% annually (based on year on year difference). - The worst institutional average improvement in share of total grants across the period is -0.34%. - In other words, all that competition for these grants results in a range of 1% difference in terms of how things are distributed annually. - The funding system was designed to achieve this result. If you go back and read the policy papers from Dawkins et al. the logic of our twin funding system is designed to provide this stable distribution as well as concentration of resources into a small number of universities. - Competition across the system is likely cancelling any competitive effects where no advantage is created or ceded. - It has a big impact for individual researchers when their projects get funded but for institutions there is nothing gained. And yet, in university strategies across the country we still see ambitions about gaining share in this kind of revenue. But it’s clearly a silly KPI, so why do we see it? And why do we invest so much in competing when there is nothing gained? I have thoughts which I’ll share later this week but I’d love to hear from others. Share them below.
It’s even worse. University administrators are pre-screening applications with the objective of bumping up their “funding rate” (an even sillier KPI), which de facto undermines the peer-selection process of the ARC.
Thanks for sharing Tim. Does that imply the peer review system is in fact evaluating merit for organisations rather for the whole nation?
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1 年You are right it is a silly KPI - the main purpose is as an external process which decides on projects that get funded WITHIN an HEI (only 1in 5) not the balance between HEIs. It could be argued that ANU delivered its best science when the researchers did not compete for ARC funding and were wholly, not partially, funded by the National Institutes grant. This echoes something a VC once said to me about research strategy ‘it is simply about appointing the best people with the greatest passion and letting them get on with it’. This I think is the case for fundamental research but maybe not for translational and applied research. Here excellence needs to be a given but other factors come into play. I believe that at the best research institutions globally it is the appointment and mentoring of researchers with a combination of self-drive and internal peer pressure which produces excellence. Now the best waste energy navigating the funding system but their greatest outputs are at the joins not within projects (in the sciences). Does our national research strategy fund those with the greatest vision pursuing the most challenging goals? I doubt the Accord will be brave enough on research strategy but I hope they are.