News & Views item - October 2005 |
FASTS Holds Forum on RQF Third-Stream Funding Considerations. (October 17, 2005)
On Wednesday October 12 the Federation of Australian Scientific and Technological Societies (FASTS) hosted a forum on Third Stream funding. For those not familiar with the term it may be defined as monies given to higher education institutions to assist them in usefully reaching out to business and the community.
FASTS has released a preliminary assessment of the value of the forum.
Speakers included David Murray (Business Council of Australia), Peter Høj (Australian Research Council), Alan Pettigrew (National Health and Medical Research Council) and Ian Chubb (Australian National University).
The audience included about 14 pro vice-chancellors (research), a large contingent from Government including the Departments of Education, Science and Training, Industry, Treasury and Communications, Information Technology and the Arts, as well as various deputy vice-chancellors, deans, heads of schools, and representatives from Cooperative Research Centres.
There were divergences of views around some of the issues e.g. some advocated a strong focus on commercialisation others argued for a broader "social good" approach.
The key messages that emerged from the day where there appeared to be substantial or unanimous agreement were:
there is no support for a third stream funding program that would be designed to compensate institutions that are "losers" in the Research Quality Framework (RQF) exercise;
Australia should not simply adopt the UK model - a program must be designed for the Australian context;
all universities should have access to a third stream fund not just those with a specific regional focus or simply connected to their performance in the RQF, and
a small number of measures are preferable to a myriad of measures that average to the mean (notwithstanding the difficulty of deciding on appropriate measures and the well understood problem of metrics driving behaviours).
With regard to the participation of Treasury, FASTS had asked them to outline the conceptual framework that they use in their analysis of budget proposals and to specify the key questions they ask of such proposals.
They listed the following:
What are the objectives that the proposal aims to address?
If it aims to improve commercialisation of public R&D, what additional value does it add to the existing programmes available under Backing Australia's Ability I and BAA II?
Does the proposal address the underlying incentive structure conducive to commercialisation and does it help to remove any current institutional, policy or regulatory impediments for commercialisation?
Does the proposal have other objectives in addition to commercialisation such as "community outreach" and can the policy design address two qualitatively different objectives at the same time?
Could objectives other than commercialisation be addressed through already available funding mechanisms?
Does the proposal crowd-out existing initiatives and private incentive for commercialisation or duplicate existing market rewards for successful commercialisation?
The matter of how to design performance criteria to ensure efficiency, accountability and transparency and at the same time leave sufficient flexibility for individual/institutional incentive and entrepreneurship should be addressed, and
what are the alternative policy designs to fiscal expenditure?
It appears that Treasury hasn't taken to heart Don Watson's Death Sentence.
Additional material in the form of PowerPoint documents and speakers' notes are available at http://www.fasts.org/.