The key policy challenge for the development and implementation of funding programs, standards and performance measures is to ensure the right balance of incentives and resources are supported, and supported in a sustainable way. Many of the shortcomings identified in various programs are found not in the development and implementation of the programs themselves, but in the unintended or
‘perverse’ ways institutions, students and academics have responded in engaging with them (with changes in publishing behaviour being the most obvious, but by no means only example).
The 1999 New Knowledge New Opportunities green paper observed that funding arrangements provided inadequate incentives for institutions to improve the quality and relevance of the research degree programs. At the time institutions were funded through operating grants for a student load target, which included postgraduate provision. Provided that load targets were met, institutions retained funding irrespective of their performance on the basic enrolment metrics. Student demand was held to play a minimal role at the time in determining the allocation of research training places across
institutions.282
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
280 Kemp, 1999b, p.29. 281 Kemp, 1999a. 282 Kemp, 1999b, p.33.
95
In 1998, the West review observed that the most significant research training initiative the
Government could adopt is one that enhances student choice and mobility. The committee believed this would enhance competition between institutions for research students, enhance the research training experience, increase interaction and knowledge transfer between institutions and improve the responsiveness of research training programs to employer needs.283 The effectiveness of this approach was premised on current and prospective research students having access to reliable comparative information on the quality and range of research training resources and support available. It was believed that were prospective candidates able to make informed decisions about their destinations for study, institutions would be required to compete for research students on the quality of their research environment, the level of support available, the quality of supervision and of the outcomes supported. It was suggested that institutions would no longer perceive research students as academic labour but as clients who enhance their core activities.284
While unpopular in many quarters at the time, the West review correctly suggested that changes of this kind would alter the way in which research students were perceived by institutions. The 1999 green paper suggested that allocating scholarships direct to students would create strong incentives for universities to respond to student demand and through this to the demands of the labour market.285 In practice, a range of powerful incentives were created through the implementation of the RTS, but their principal influence seems to have been to increase the focus on the key measures already used in block grant performance indices: performance in winning competitive grants, publications and in particular on research degree completions. While the increased emphasis on research degree completions has brought about a significant shift in research training culture and practice in Australia, not all of the original aims of the scheme have been met through the creation of these incentives. Despite preliminary steps toward empowering candidates as informed participants in a ‘market’ for quality research training, competition on quality on the part of providers still takes second place to competition on prestige.
Following the West Review, the RWS again raised the question of the rigour and relevance of the information base available, not just to inform prospective students but also to provide data on the relative performance of institutions in receipt of Commonwealth funds. The Australian Government’s Excellence in Research for Australia Initiative (ERA) now makes an important contribution by providing a measure of quality of the publishing activity of university staff. To this extent ERA
performs a valuable function in lending some transparency to the usual institutional hype regarding the quality and scale of their research activities. This transparency is certainly useful for prospective research students. What ERA does not measure, however, is the publishing activity of research students themselves. This is odd given the suggestion that ERA could somehow be a measure of quality in research training. Publication of ERA results prompts significant attention from media, managers and marketing units. The extent to which these results catch the attention of prospective research higher degree students, and how these results may align with other information such as that presented on the MyUniversity website, remains to be seen.
Effective student choice and student mobility depend on the availability of information as much as on the administrative and funding arrangements established by government. For this to work, students need access to information on salient aspects of the research-training environment. Aspects suggested in the West review included the focus, style and content of research training programs, the quality of supervision and student support services, the level of research and teaching infrastructure, employment outcomes of research graduates, and the achievements of researchers at each institution.286 The West review also pointed out that it was likely providers would benefit from the discipline of articulating these aspects of their programs and their strategies and objectives for continuous improvement. The Review recommended the development of a strategy to improve the quality and range of information available to students to enable them to make informed choices about research supervisors, and
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
283 West, 1998, p.151. 284 Ibid.
285 Kemp, 1999b, p.34. 286 West, 1998, p.152.
96
comparative information on all aspects of the research-training environment supported by institutions.287
It is interesting to reflect on how little progress has been made in this area since the implementation of the RTS. Recent activities like the development of a Good Practice Framework by the Council of Deans and Directors of Graduate Studies in Australia (DDoGS) have the potential to support considerable improvements in this area.288 For the most part, however, efforts to date have been tailored to the institutional perspective, and to the relationship between institutions and government in accounting for quality. As with ERA results and the MyUniversity website289, the extent to which developments in this area are intelligible or useful for current and prospective students in supporting an effective ‘market’ for quality remains to be seen.
Conclusion
Research training in Australia is now firmly established as central to building and sustaining the national capacity for innovation. The key policy challenge for research education is to achieve the right balance of resourcing and incentives, where quality outcomes are supported in a sustainable way. While there have been achievements in many of these areas over the last decade, there remain opportunities for some strategic (and relatively inexpensive) reforms for government to proceed with. Among key achievements since 2007 is the development of a coherent strategy for building and sustaining research workforce capacity. While the Research Workforce Strategy provides a sound basis for future development of the research-training scheme it does not provide for policy and programs directly, and it certainly does not fund them. A further commitment is required on the part of government to ensure the research workforce strategy serves its purpose as a framework for planning and developing Australia’s innovation and research workforce needs to 2020 and beyond.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
287 Recommendation 28, West, 1998, p.156. 288 Luca and Wolski, 2012.
289 Or other communication platforms that the Australian Government may choose to support (see priority 5.1 of the Research
97