Adrian Gibbs: More Academic Mensuration and Wrong Criteria

Australian National University vice-chancellor Ian Chubb’s comments in the Higher Education Supplement (The Australian, 29 October 2008) will scarcely encourage any of those trying to make a career of research in Australia, but is of interest because he is presumably promoting ideas that he believes will appeal to the mandarins.  "Concentrate research spending on proven performers" is his message.  But then we learn that his proven performers are research institutions rather than research workers! 

How does V-C Chubb identify such "proven performers"?  He recommends that we use the rankings devised by The Times and by Shanghai Jiao Tong University, in effect two beauty competitions. Thus he is advocating a further extension of the numbers games by which the bureausauriate is numbing down Australian academe. 

How is it possible to embody the value of a complex organisation, like a university, in a single number?   The shortcomings of such metrics are shown by the widely quoted Citation Indices/Impact Factor rankings used to assess the quality of individual academic contributions.  What is the evidence that these reflect the intellectual value of an author's contributions and not merely the opinions of journal editors choosing articles that are fashionable and promote journal sales?

No, the wasteful jumble that is the current Australian university funding model must be unravelled.  The funding process should be Darwinian in principle and based on the intellectual aspirations of students and academics, namely those who are at the "coal-face" being trained, and doing the teaching and research.  They should be free to "vote with their feet" to find the right conditions for realizing their aspirations.  The present top-down feudal system wastes a steadily increasing proportion of scarce resources on pervasive and destructive bureaucratisation, and must be abandoned.

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Professor Adrian Gibbs is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science. He retired from The Australian National University in 1999.