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CURRENT TRENDS IN RESEARCH POLICY
Abstract
The major research policy issues being addressed in Australian higher education arise from problems common to all developed countries and cannot be understood purely in terms of local circumstances. In the immediate future there is likely to be more rather than less emphasis on the competitive allocation of resources, selectivity and concentration in funding, and the setting of research priorities. These trends, together with growth in postgraduate research training, will encourage movement towards a method of funding higher education in which the research and research training functions of institutions are more explicitly identified and there is greater reliance on targeted research funding.
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NOTES AND REFERENCES
See, for example, Department of Science, Submission to ASTEC Review of Public Investment in Research and Development in Australia, Canberra, September 1986; Australian Science and Technology Council, Improving the Research Performance of Australia's Universities and Other Higher Education Institutions, Australian Government Publishing Service, February 1987.
This topic is widely discussed in OECD documents. Recent treatments of relevance here include those in Government-University-Industry Research Roundtable, Science and Technology in the Academic Enterprise: Status, Trends and Issues: A Discussion Paper, National Academy Press, Washington DC, October 1989; Leonard L. Lederman, ‘US research and development policy and priorities and comparisons with selected countries: Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Sweden, United Kingdom, and United States’, paper presented at the National Conference on University Research and the Future of Canada, University of Alberta, Edmonton, 26–29 April 1988; Manuel Crespo, ‘The management of austerity in higher education: an international comparison’, Higher Education, 18, 4, 1989, pp. 373–96; Australian Science and Technology Council, Profile of Australian Science, Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra, August 1989.
This was a dominant theme at the 1988 National Science and Technology Analysis Group (NSTAG) Conference. See NSTAG, The Nature and Role of Innovation in the Economy: Report of the 1988 Review of Science, Technology and Engineering in Australia. It also featured prominently in submissions to the Committee of Senior Officials on Science Capacity, convened in October 1988, and remains current. For a recent statement see Robyn Williams, ‘Desperately seeking trainee scientists’, Sunday Herald, 4 February 1990.
See Government-University-Industry Research Roundtable, Nurturing Science and Engineering Talent: A Discussion Paper, National Academy Press, Washington DC, 1987.
OECD Education Committee, Changing Patterns in Finance in Higher Education, Country Study: Germany, OECD, Paris, November 1988, pp. 27, 69.
For more detailed discussion see Research for Australia: Higher Education's Contribution, circulated by the Hon. J.S. Dawkins, MP, Minister for Employment, Education and Training, Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra, May 1989.
Committee to Review Higher Education Research Policy (R.H.T. Smith, Chairman), Report, Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra, 1989, 12.
These themes continue to receive regular airings on the pages of the Higher Education Supplement of The Australian. Relatively extreme statements include Hugh Stretton, Life after Dawkins: teaching and research with diminishing resources, Sixth Wallace Wurth Memorial Lecture, University of New South Wales, 7 September 1989, and Stephen Knight, ‘Searching for research, or the selling of the Australian mind’, Meanjin, 3/1989, pp. 456–62.
Australian Research Council, The Matter of Research Priorities, Canberra, October 1989.
op. cit., p. 3.
John Maddox, ‘The Dawkinsization of Australia’, Nature, 343, 18 January 1990, p. 205.
Committee to Review Higher Education Research Policy, Report, pp. 87, 91.
A Statement by the Hon. R.J.L. Hawke, AC, Prime Minister, and the Hon. Barry Jones, Minister for Science, and Minister Assisting the Minister for Industry, Technology and Commerce, Science and Technology for Australia, Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra, May 1989, p. 32.
See The Australian, 25 October 1989, p. 13. In response to the concept of educational profiles as developed in Higher Education: A Policy Discussion Paper (the ‘Green Paper’), December 1987, the former Chairman of the University's Council of the Commonwealth Tertiary Education Commission, Don McNicol, emphasised its similarity to earlier practice. He noted that while potential for ‘coercion’ by the Commonwealth exists, it has always existed. See McNicol, ‘Educational profiles, funding levels, and co-ordination’, Grant Harman and V. Lynn Meek (eds), Australian Higher Education Reconstructed? Department of Administrative and Higher Education Studies, University of New England, 1988, pp. 42–3.
Higher Education Council, Third Report to the National Board of Employment, Education and Training on the Operation of Section 14 of the Higher Education Funding Act 1988 and the Higher Education Contribution Scheme, Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra, May 1990.
Preliminary work on the model was discussed at a public seminar in Canberra on 29–30 November 1989, convened by the Department of Employment, Education and Training and the Higher Education Council. Modelling has since been carried out by DEET and it was expected that details will be made available to institutions for comment in July 1990.
Alexander L. Darling et al., ‘Autonomy and control: a university funding formula as an instrument of public policy’, Higher Education, 18, 5, 1989, pp. 559–83.