News & Views item - July 2005

 

 

UK's Financial Times Highlights Views of FASTS' President on Australia's Funding Cuts to R&D. (July 5, 2005)

    Rory Mcguire in the July 1 Financial Times opened his 700 word opinion piece with "Australia in danger of missing the Asia technology race" and follows up with

Australia's continuing funding cuts to technology-driven R&D offer the stark promise that it could be left standing as the Asian technology race gets going.
    Compounding the danger of these cuts is a widespread perception that cash-strapped Australian universities are lowering academic standards as they compete to tap into the lucrative Asian education market.

These observations are followed up with excepts from an interview with Professor Snow Barlow, President of the Federation of Australian Scientific and Technological Societies. Professor Barlow told Mcguire,

Federal Government investment in R&D has fallen to just under 0.6 per cent of GDP ­ down from 0.76 per cent 10 years ago. Part of this decline is due to GDP growth but it is disappointing that the Government has not seen this growth as an opportunity to increase investment in science and technology. Australia has to up its game.

    China is buying back the best of its overseas researchers and we are already seeing a dramatic increase in citations of [scientific] papers from China. [It] is investing heavily in key universities and, after decades paying little attention to intellectual property rights and royalties, is now taking more interest in these.
    This reflects the scant regard the US paid to British and European patents before World War I. China has observed how the US creamed off the best European talent for up to 150 years by offering them study places in the US and then employing only the best.
    India is also locking in technical expertise. It is investing extraordinary money in universities around Bangalore and other centres, and they can afford to be very choosy about whom they train and hire.
    The Australian effort, by comparison, is very disappointing. What other country would appoint a part-time Chief Scientist? The last one worked energetically and effectively but he was hired for only two days a week and since his contract ended in May the position has been vacant.

Mcguire went on to cite a 2003 study commissioned by the Australian Research Council which concluded that  its research investment has generated a 139 to 150 per cent return, not counting health and social benefits ­ about twice the return from other public and private research funding.

 

Professor Aibing Yu, who holds professorships at the University of New South Wales, the University of Science and Technology Beijing and Chinašs North-Eastern University, is a member of the Chinese Academy of Science, and has joint research projects in China and Singapore by way of explanation pointed out to Mcguire that

Australiašs research effort is obviously smaller than China's, but Australian research is better quality. Where Australia falls behind is the cost. Here the salary and on-costs of a post-doctoral researcher are about A$75,000, which is about 15 times the cost of maintaining a post-doc in China. And Chinese companies have to maximise their profits, so they invest more in research.

Which may describe why China is currently forging ahead, but isn't particularly useful in reversing Australia's continued relative decline in R&D with respect to its cohort nations.

 

Mcguire then leaves his readers with a twenty-seven word tag sentence which may become a classic.

The office of Australia's Minister for Science, Education and Training, Dr Brendan Nelson, said the Financial Times' questions were too detailed and failed to respond to them.