July 21, 2014

Forget the KPIs: let's talk about research

We need to develop riskier streams that support risker projects addressing real-world problems, writes the Director of UOW’s Global Challenges Program, Professor Chris Gibson.

In the media, on the streets, and behind the closed doors of our hallowed tertiary institutions, debate has raged over the government's proposed changes to the higher education sector. Fee deregulation and student debt have taken centre stage and the front page, but it is the backbone of our universities - research - that demands a proper conversation.

Research in Australia is a major success story. On all measures, from our comparatively tiny population base, AusfraliaStesearchers have - exceeded expectations, hi effect, research has become a growth industry, part of the broader picture of universities becoming economic enablers within cities and regions.

Australian universities have thus far achieved all this without the sector arguably receiving its deserved share of central government funding. A 2012 report demonstrated Australia spends 2.25 per cent of its GDP on research and development, a figure that falls short of much smaller OECD nations, including Sweden (3.6 per cent) and Finland (4 per cent).

Due to the sustained efforts of the agencies and programs that administer central funding schemes - the Australian Research Council, National Health and Medical Research Council, and Co-operative Research Centres - and those of thousands of Australian researchers, the nation has developed a key comparative advantage internationally despite comparatively scarce funding.

But has Australian research become too safe, too over-managed?

Revered researchers have often been risk-takers: single-minded geeks inventing new technologies; intrepid scientists deep in jungles or deep beneath the sea finding new species or archaeological treasures; inspired types rethinking a perennial mathematical or philosophical problem; historians going back into the archive to reopen often uncomfortable conversations about the past Yet the reality is becoming less heroic - a landscape as much about inter-institutional competition for scarce resources, rankings on league tables, team management and leadership skills, and gaining approvals from funding bodies and committees.


Much of this is about compliance and quality control. But increasingly, if one looks globally to where the truly exciting research is being done, it is where universities are still prepared to take risks: funding research ventures not because they deliver predictable outputs against KPIs (key performance indicators), but because they tackle world problems head on. In other words, universities that encourage the best minds to exercise curiosity and courage in an atmosphere of academic freedom.

Australian research is in danger of retreating, rather than exploring, especially in a constrained fiscal environment Instead of courageous ideas, we have conservative research proposals; "salami-slicing" of research results into ever-more-narrow journal articles; restrictively "in-house" research teams competing from different institutions rather than collaborating for the greater good; and researchers focusing on consistency of track record rather than taking sideways leaps into new fields or truly novel collaborations.

Such behaviour counteracts the very premise of universities as the centre of new thinking. At the same time, we are failing to address urgent global problems of environment economy and humanity - problems that cannot be addressed by disciplines in isolation.

What can be done about it? We need to develop funding streams that support riskier, often grassroots projects addressing complex, real- world problems and harness the expertise of researchers across disciplines, in new combinations.

A small vanguard of Australian, British and American universities is finding new ways to fund researchers, initially from their own central budgets, around ambitious, identified "challenges" of international scope.

The University of Wollongongs (UOW) Global Challenges Program, along with the University of Melbourne's Grand Challenges and the University of Queensland's Global Change Institute, are prominent early examples. The universities of Western Sydney and Adelaide, and no doubt many others, are about to follow. Internationally, Princeton University in the US, and Warwick University and University College London in Britain have taken the lead.

Such programs must not be seen as replacements for central government funding of research, but rather as complements to traditional schemes.

As just one example, UOW's Global Challenges Program has invested in projects that seek to open up a radical conversation about the future of Australian manufacturing. From examining whether new manufacturing techniques can transform and reinvigorate a regional economy, to using 3D printing technologies to create musical instruments that are not feasible within standard manufacturing - these projects cut across disciplines, involving creative artists, engineers, designers, geographers, information system analysts, social marketers, and labour market economists.

Beyond UOW, the Global Challenges Program is growing relationships with researchers at CSIRO, Swinburne University, and RMIT, and our researchers are being funded to visit cities around the world, to learn from others' successes and mistakes. We are also .

It is research that is bold and unpredictable. But it is research that is also inspiring for those involved - reconnecting them with a motivation to improve the world. For many, it reminds them of the reason they became an academic in the first place.

A multidisciplinary focus combined with trust academic freedom and ongoing support gives researchers greater flexibility to explore new ideas, to work on projects that do not already have their outcomes determined and that simply might not otherwise be funded. By definition they are riskier ventures, and they do not map neatly onto a highly metric-driven management culture. But that is precisely the point.

Originally published in the Australian Financial Review.

UOW academics exercise academic freedom by providing expert commentary, opinion and analysis on a range of ongoing social issues and current affairs. This expert commentary reflects the views of those individual academics and does not necessarily reflect the views or policy positions of the University of Wollongong.