AUSTRALIA: Not keeping up on research investment

Australia's Group of Eight, a coalition of leading research-intensive universities, has just published a report, The International Tendency to Concentrate Research Capability, outlining strategies being adopted by a range of countries to focus their investment in areas of research excellence. It argues that while comparable countries have been intensifying investment in top research universities as a means of raising their competitiveness in the global knowledge economy, Australia has failed to take the necessary steps. While the available (lagged) measures of performance indicate that the country can punch above its weight, "we are not keeping up with the capacity improvements being made elsewhere".

The most valid world university rankings (those prepared annually since 2003 by the Graduate School of Education, Shanghai Jiao Tong (SJT) University) reflect research performance measured against international scholarly benchmarks. Broadly, those rankings correlate positively with country GDP per capita, the report states, and it continues:

Australia currently has 12 universities in the world top 500, including three in the top 100, three in the top 200 and two in the top 300. Given the developments in leading countries and emerging economies, it will be a major challenge for Australia to sustain its representation among the world's top universities.

It is necessary for an advanced economy to have a world class higher education system but it is no longer sufficient. The old notion of a nation being satisfied with a broad range of reasonably strong universities has been abandoned even among those countries with strong egalitarian traditions such as France and Germany. Concentration involves targeting new funding to build the capacity to sustain new heights of excellence. Typically, new funding is allocated on the basis of proven performance judged against international benchmarks, wherever it is to be found, and where there is genuine potential to scale-up.

Concerns continue to be voiced in Australia about a policy of concentration. The important concerns are those that relate to national rather than institutional interests, and the pertinent policy question is not whether to concentrate but how. Concentration should be designed to complement and strengthen a diversified national system.

* Canada has set itself the goal of ranking amongst the top four countries in the world in terms of R&D performance. In 2002 it set a target of increasing Masters and Doctoral student enrolments by 5% per year through to 2010. It has funded 2,000 new Chairs, two-thirds of them in the most research intensive universities. It has also provided $500 million over seven years to help Canada become a world leader in renewable fuels, and $100 million to position

* The United Kingdom through several rounds of externally reviewed assessments of research quality has increasingly concentrated funding for research, research training and research infrastructure. Additional investments in research, aimed at boosting British capacity, have been selectively targeted to the top performing universities. Recent funding of science has demonstrated the largest ever UK commitment to global excellence in research.

* Finland is funding national centres of excellence in research to support national and international networking and cooperation with top-tier groups.

* France is investing in competitive clusters, with 10 'super-campuses' sharing EUR5 billion to form French centres of excellence to rank among the world's top universities.

* Germany has taken a major change in policy direction through its EUR2 billion Excellence Initiative. Formerly it has funded teaching and research equally in every German university. Three tiers of funding under the Excellence Initiative, including excellence clusters, graduate schools and future concepts will result in no more than 10 universities targeted as elite research institutions.

* China through its 211 and 985 projects has concentrated funding in its top performing universities with the aim of increasing Chinese representation amongst the world's leaders.

* India has established 12 new central universities, alongside plans to set up five new Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research, eight new Indian Institutes of Technology, seven new Indian Institutes of Management, and 20 new Indian Institutes of Information Technology.

* Japan has established the World Premier International Research Center (WPI) Initiative. It provides concentrated support for projects to establish and operate research centres that have at their core a group of very high-level investigators.

* Singapore has concentrated investment in building world class nodes, to build the "Harvard and MIT of Asia": The National University of Singapore and the Nanyang Institute of Technology.

* South Korea aims to place the nation among the ranks of the advanced economies by the early 2010s. To this end, the government emphasises efficient use of S&T resources based on the principle of "selection and concentration". Brain Korea's first phase expired late in 2007. The government has doubled spending for the second seven-year phase to $2 billion.

The report goes on to argue the case for greater research concentration and to describe in greater detail the strategies being developed and implemented in 'comparator' countries.
Full report available on the Group of Eight site