Editorial-29 December 2002

In 1974 the Australian State Governments effectively ceded full financial responsibility for higher education in Australia to the Commonwealth. However, all but national institutions operate under State or Territory legislation, although the money comes from Canberra and the terms of finance are decided by Canberra. Over a quarter of a century has past and it's increasingly apparent that the consequences have been appalling. More than any single event, it accounted for the de facto repudiation of responsibility by the states for one of their most precious assets, and any incentive for competition between the states to foster and maintain the best simply died away.  Furthermore, a direct consequence of the Commonwealth's determination of budget allocations was the nationwide  Dawkinising of the Australian university system by the Hawke Labor Government under the guise of providing universal higher education.

The notably populist Coalition Government under John Howard has exacerbated the demise of higher education and with it the relative standard of Australian science, by reducing in absolute terms public support for universities while required funding continued to increase. The states accuse the government of strangling the universities while the Commonwealth accuses the universities of shoddy governance and the states of inadequate oversight. And we have the recent  ludicrous juxtaposition of the Minister for Education, Science and Training, Brendan Nelson, putting out a media release with the headline, "INNOVATION SCORECARD PUTS AUSTRALIA AMONGST THE BEST," according to Backing Australia's Ability: Real Results Real Jobs, the Commonwealth Government's Innovation Report for 2002-03. On the other hand the science weekly Nature in its Editorial of December 12^th writes, "Australia's research community suffers not so much from a tyranny of distance as one of scale. Australian science takes pride in wringing high-quality research from scant resources. Despite increases in government funding over the past two years, industrial support for research remains scarce, and Australia's universities are cash-strapped. Now it risks slipping further behind as the price of research rises."
    In addition TFW has previously shown graphs which indicate, and indicate strongly, that Australia is slipping further behind when ranked with what we perceive are the members of our peer group. So for example Australia's total R&D spending as a percent of GDP remains at 1.54%. The Coalition Government makes the point that Federal expenditure on R&D is 0.70% of GDP, as compared with 0.54% for the UK, and 0.59% for Canada and therefore it is the private sector that's dragging the chain. However, objective analyses as to what are the causes for low private sector investment, compared to the UK and Canada for example, are lacking. So what's missing in our economic environment that's present in theirs? Furthermore, it is unclear as to what part of Australia's 0.70% of GDP contributed by the tax payer is going to fund applied research at the expense of basic studies and how that compares with our cohort. For example, the Australian Research Council (ARC), the only significant contributor to non-medical basic research, earmarks a significant proportion of its budget allocation to its "Linkage Program" (see its 2002 - 2004 Strategic Action Plan). According to the ARC, "The focus of the linkage research supported by the ARC is promoting research partnerships with business and industry and other publicly funded research agencies..." Professor Vicki Sara, ARC CEO, has stated in testimony to the Senate estimates committee overseeing the ARC that some 30% of ARC funding goes to linkage programs.

Speaking of Canada, it's worth re-examining Canada's support for R&D past present and projected through 2010. Comparing the time course to that of Australia's it's interesting to note that the two nations were virtually identical in support for R&D in the mid 1990s at which point we nose-dived and have never recovered.

Backing Australia's ability halted the slide but hasn't reversed it. In the meantime Canada's Chrétien government has thumped the table and set a target of 3% of GDP as support for R&D by 2010. Its Minister for Industry, Alan Rock, remains adamant the he intends the target to be met. So far there is no indication that our Minister for Education, Science and Training has any intention of talking to him, or Lord Sainsbury, UK Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Science and Innovation to seek their views of how their governments are looking to realise their stated objectives -- just to point out two individuals who might be worth having a serious chat to. And of course there's the European Community's stated commitment to attain a goal of 3% of GDP to support R&D by decades end.

But She'll be right mate; the Minister is taking the "product" of  of his issues papers, 600 plus garnered submissions, and the Reference Group assessment for his Higher Education Review, directly for processing during the May budget considerations.

The Group of Eight in publishing the graph below would appear to disagree as to the well being of Australia's R&D sector, and although the methods used to forecast future support for R&D through 2005/2006 haven't been revealed by the Go8 neither has Dr. Nelson publicly questioned the forecast of 1.39% for Australia vs 2.45% for the OECD weighted average by '05/'06.

Understandably the government wants to put the most flattering light on the nation's achievements and this calls into question the objectivity of its conclusions. We are told repeatedly that Australia "punches above its weight" when it comes to its international standing in research. Just what this means is open to debate, but it's interesting to look at what ought to be something approaching an unbiased assessment of Australia's relative standing.  The table to the left published by the United States National Science Board, suggests that not to be the case and shows a worrisome decline in our standing over the past decade. Taking into account the fact that citation indices lag several years behind work in progress, the table when assessed against the data summarised in the graphs above, allow at least the tentative conclusion that Australia is going to slip further behind in the current decade. For example, while Prime Minister Howard recently highlighted the importance of the enabling sciences (mathematics, physics, chemistry), during the tenure of the Coalition government there has been an alarming decline in their university staffing (FASTS policy statement Figure 8.1 below). And how thorough and how objective Dr. Nelson's designated assignment to assess the nation's universities and research institutions abilities to do research remains to be seen.

Perhaps the most serious concern is what appears to be authentic ignorance and self delusion on the part of the Minister as to what constitutes an outstanding national system of higher education.

Alex Reisner
The Funneled Web