News & Views item - June 2007

 

 

FASTS' Analyses the "Changing Profile of Australian Expenditure on  R&D between 1996/7 and 2004/5 and Comes up With Some Surprises. (June 19, 2007)

    In a statement released today the Federation of Australian Scientific and Technological Societies asks: "Would a political party be credible if it promised to increase university expenditure on R&D by 82% in cultural studies and 72% in tourism over the next 4 years but limit physics and mathematics to 17% and cut mechanical and industrial engineering by 16%? Yet intended or otherwise, this is what happened between 2000 and 2004."

 

To support its contention the federation has published a 24 page report, Is this what you had in mind? and available from their website.

 

The key findings include:

FASTS' president, Tom Spurling said while:

Increased expenditure in health and medical research is well justified and popular, [a] critical point is that structural change in Australian research has created a raft of intended and unintended consequences that need close analysis.

Irrespective of how the shift from science is interpreted, it is a good idea that there is informed debate over what social, environmental and economic outcomes we want from R&D as a way of guiding appropriate distribution of expenditure.

Some of the trends highlighted in the report will surprise researchers and policy makers and we hope it will contribute to constructive discussion about the structure and direction of Australian R&D.

The two charts below show graphically the change to research and development funding ,as a percentage of GDP, in higher education overall, gross expenditure on research and development (GERD) and then publicly funded research and development (GOVERD)

 

Reprinted from FASTS' Is This What You Had in Mind