De Minimis
  • Home
  • ABOUT US
  • Podcast
  • Your Learned Friend
  • Anonymous Feedback
  • Art
  • Get published!
  • Constitution
  • Archive
    • 2018
    • 2017
    • 2017 >
      • Semester 2 (Volume 12) >
        • Issue 1
        • Issue 2
        • Issue 3
        • Issue 4
        • Issue 5
        • Issue 6
        • Issue 7
        • Issue 8 (election issue)
        • Issue 9
        • Issue 10
        • Issue 11
        • Issue 12
    • 2016 >
      • Semester 1 (Volume 9) >
        • Issue 1
        • Issue 2
        • Issue 3
        • Issue 4
        • Issue 5
        • Issue 6
        • Issue 7
        • Issue 8
        • Issue 9
        • Issue 10
        • Issue 11
        • Issue 12
      • Semester 2 (Volume 10) >
        • Issue 1
        • Issue 2
        • Issue 3
        • Issue 4
        • Issue 5
        • Issue 6
        • Issue 7
        • Issue 8 (Election Issue)
        • Issue 9
        • Issue 10
        • Issue 11
        • Issue 12
        • Issue 13 (test)
    • 2015 >
      • Semester 1 (Volume 7) >
        • Issue 1
        • Issue 2
        • Issue 3
        • Issue 4
        • Issue 5
        • Issue 6
        • Issue 7
        • Issue 8
        • Issue 9
        • Issue 10
        • Issue 11
      • Semester 2 (Volume 8) >
        • Issue 1
        • Issue 2
        • Issue 3
        • Issue 4
        • Issue 5
        • Issue 6
        • Issue 7
        • Issue 8
        • Issue 9
        • Issue 10
    • 2014 >
      • Semester 1 (Volume 5) >
        • Issue 1
        • Issue 2
        • Issue 3
        • Issue 4
        • Issue 5
        • Issue 6
        • Issue 7
      • Semester 2 (Volume 6) >
        • Issue 1
        • Issue 2
        • Issue 3
        • Issue 4
        • Issue 6
        • Issue 7
        • Issue 10
        • Issue 12
    • 2013 >
      • Issue 1
      • Issue 2
      • Issue 3
      • Issue 4
      • Issue 5
      • Issue 6
    • 2012 >
      • Semester 1 (Volume 1) >
        • Issue 1
        • Issue 2
        • Issue 3
        • Issue 4
        • Issue 5
        • Issue 6
        • Issue 7
        • Issue 8
        • Issue 9
        • Issue 10
        • Issue 11
        • Issue 12
      • Semester 2 (Volume 2) >
        • Issue 1
        • Issue 2
        • Issue 3
        • Issue 4
        • Issue 5
        • Issue 6
        • Issue 7
        • Issue 8
        • Issue 9
        • Issue 10
        • Issue 11
        • Issue 12

Research Funding to be Linked to Industry Placements – An Opinion

24/8/2021

 
Volume 20, Issue 5
​Matt Harper

Picture
Degrees by research are not something that most of us, especially in the law faculty, give much thought to unless we are directly considering doing one ourselves. But the importance of research to well-rounded universities, and indeed society as a whole, cannot be underestimated. It is for that reason that the government’s proposed changes to research funding should be criticised by all students no matter what we study. 

The Department of Education, Skills and Employment is the body that oversees funding for research degrees (HDRs - Higher Degrees by research), and it has been tasked by the Government’s 2021-2022 budget to implement a new scheme ostensibly aimed at increasing researcher employability by increasing funding to universities whose research degrees incorporate industry internships. This initiative is part of the Research Training Program (RTP), which is the scheme under which the funding given to universities for their research degrees is determined. Currently, funding is determined according to three factors given different weight – 25% of funding per student is determined according to how much competitive income the University receives for that research, and another 25% is allocated on ‘Engagement’ income (essentially non-competitive income). 

The other 50% of funding per research student is determined by ‘completions’, or essentially how many students actually graduate with their research degrees. This is obviously problematic for many reasons beyond the scope of this discussion. These completions are, confusingly, further broken down and sorted according to various weightings (on a positive note, completions by indigenous students are weighted higher than non-indigenous in an effort to encourage a greater indigenous presence in research). It is through these weightings that the industry internships changes will take effect – once implemented, researchers who undertake an industry placement of at least 60 days over three months, within the first 18 months of their degree, will net their university a greater completions weighting than those who do not. For example, current low-cost research doctorates attract a weighting of 2.0, whereas the same doctorate with an industry internship will, under the new scheme, attract a weighting of 4.0, doubling the value of the 50% of research funding that graduations bring universities.
My contention is that this move to incentivise industry-placement focussed research is rooted in a neoliberal, market logic which ought to be rejected in the university context. To be clear, links between industry and academia are obviously very beneficial and should nonetheless be encouraged, but by making higher funding contingent upon these internships, a market logic is imposed upon universities which will inevitably result in a race to the bottom – students will lose out, academics will lose out, and the only winners will be the Government’s budget numbers (as the economic productivity of the research sector is ostensibly boosted). The shift in universities across the world from being places of learning to becoming vocational centres of employment training is a seemingly inexorable trend, but changes like this progress the transformation so quietly and insidiously that most students and academics don’t have much of a chance to really question what is going on. 

There is an ingrained stigma in Australian society against doing anything at university which cannot be readily explained to non-tertiary educated family and friends (almost always couched in terms of what sort of job you expect to get at the end of it), and this makes research and education for its own sake incredibly hard to defend. But we must nevertheless. When research degrees are given any value or justification at all, it is almost universally in terms of employable skills – such discourses usually run along the lines of ‘being able to gather and analyse data’ and other similar resume beautifying platitudes. 

Naturally we should want students to be able to get jobs after their education -  it is of course why most of us are here -  but is that what is really happening? The changes are couched in the language of ‘benefitting industry by enabling innovation’, but is the implication here that innovation cannot occur unless it is driven by the market? In fact, there is good reason to believe otherwise. Innovation and new ideas thrive best in an atmosphere of academic freedom (in the sense of the freedom to pursue any particular path of research one is interested in), but in industry research is often constrained to what the market forces operating on a particular company are dictating. As we know, profit and the public good are not always linked one-to-one, and so any move to further increase academia’s reliance on corporate priorities and goodwill is a bad one.

The industry placement changes to research funding are scheduled to take effect from 2024. 

Matt Harper is a second year JD student
The views in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of De Minimis or its Editors.
Harp on mr harper
24/8/2021 09:01:14 pm

Dear Mr Harper,

Since you have the answers, may I ask you for more wisdom?

Where can I get a prescription of for those rose tinted glasses you wear as you traverse the globe?

Why do we research?

Is it to solve problems, create innovations, make life on earth better?

If we do use research for this noble purpose, how would one turn these research findings into useable information/products/services for the masses?

What good is a reaearch article sitting in the basement of the Baileau collecting dust?

Better yet, how does this dust bunny afford its rent in the affluent bluestone laneways of Royal Parade?

Can the ivory tower simultaneously consume the fruits of neoliberalism and not be part of its orbit?

Hey you!
24/8/2021 11:49:26 pm

I like that despite the vaguely condescending tone, friend, you pretty much prove Harper's point.

One can't suggest "research and education for its own sake" without folk like you getting red in the face and demanding some sort of financial justification. What a shame.

Harp on Mr Harper - the Return
25/8/2021 08:33:22 am

Hey you!

The funding changes proposed, and still in consultation with Univeristies and Industry, are directly related to higher research. Education funding goes on as normal, fret not.

Our international students will return and our lovely buckets of money will once again afford us the $luxury$ of pursuing research for research sake.

For the time being, the 3 months of proposed Indsutry placement/internship for a budding higher research is yet to overthrow your idealistic vision of education for education’s sake.

Financial justification is an odd thing. I’d love there to be more research not less. More education for the sake of education.

However, in times like these of burgeoning public debt, universities posting deficits, mass redundancies, mass casualisation of the lecturers/tutors etc., we must look for small ways to ensure that research can go on.

Call me red in the face, call me a neoliberal. The reality is that we are chained to the coins in our pocket.

Compromise is a wonderful thing.

Nuancedly yours,
Pink



Mr Harper
25/8/2021 05:10:57 pm

Mr Harper

Firstly, I love the 'Harp on Mr Harper' - very clever. And at that invitation, this is me continuing to harp on.

Why is it that arguments of economic necessity are brought to bear so predominantly against education and not other areas? It is telling that you, and others, use language like "universities posting deficits" to justify restructuring them along supposedly more fiscally responsible lines, yet we never speak of the army posting deficits, for example (and those deficits are quite astronomical). We just implicitly accept that military defence is something that exists outside the market because it is necessary for our national wellbeing (debatable, but putting that aside to illustrate the point), or, in language that you'd probably be more comfortable with, there are indirect, non-monetary benefits that cannot necessarily be neatly tallied on a profit and loss sheet. Why cannot education be the same? Indeed, for the many centuries that universities have existed, they have not done so on sufferance of their ability to turn a surplus. They have existed, and as I was trying to argue in this article, should *continue* to exist because society and our lives would be much impoverished if the education sector was stripped back to being a purely economic function.

Contrary to what some would have you believe, market mechanisms do not, and need not, permeate every aspect of society for it to still function effectively. I agree the money does have to come from somewhere to fund research at the end of the day, we are indeed 'chained to the coins in our pocket', but it's a leap to go from acknowledging funding difficulties to arguing that unless it can immediately and directly demonstrate their economic usefulness to 'industry', research ought to be sacrificed on the alter of economic necessity.

The private sector is bad at any research and development which has non-economic objectives. Anything which cannot be economically justified to shareholders is simply not done. Society needs a place where desirable research can be pursued without having to justify it in terms of immediate profitability, and while yes, that sometimes results in dead ends which end end up collecting dust in the Baillieu basement, without the freedom to take such intellectual risks we will just continue refining what already exists rather than opening ourselves to new paradigms. Perhaps 'research for it's own sake' was imprecise language on my part in this respect, but I was more trying to emphasise that we need to resist this implicit assumption that everything must be framed in terms of being a 'service' or 'product'.

Tying research to industry and companies so directly through this proposed model will lessen the ability of research to address long-term, macro issues in favour of a more narrow approach with emphasis on research with immediate applicability, and this will see entire areas of research, such as philosophy and other humanities, receive even less resourcing in favour of STEM fields.

I take your point that education funding isn't being decreased under the model (although it is under many other schemes which will flow on into research anyway), but by the very act of giving more funding to degrees that include these placements, the universities which don't include them will relatively fall behind in funding, and so it is still market logic of competitive advantage which is being introduced here, which will result in it becoming economically infeasible to not adopt the industry placements as the government clearly desires.

This isn't a compromise. It is one more insidious step in neoliberalism's project of turning every sphere of human life into a business.


Comments are closed.
    Picture

    Archives

    December 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    December 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014

  • Home
  • ABOUT US
  • Podcast
  • Your Learned Friend
  • Anonymous Feedback
  • Art
  • Get published!
  • Constitution
  • Archive
    • 2018
    • 2017
    • 2017 >
      • Semester 2 (Volume 12) >
        • Issue 1
        • Issue 2
        • Issue 3
        • Issue 4
        • Issue 5
        • Issue 6
        • Issue 7
        • Issue 8 (election issue)
        • Issue 9
        • Issue 10
        • Issue 11
        • Issue 12
    • 2016 >
      • Semester 1 (Volume 9) >
        • Issue 1
        • Issue 2
        • Issue 3
        • Issue 4
        • Issue 5
        • Issue 6
        • Issue 7
        • Issue 8
        • Issue 9
        • Issue 10
        • Issue 11
        • Issue 12
      • Semester 2 (Volume 10) >
        • Issue 1
        • Issue 2
        • Issue 3
        • Issue 4
        • Issue 5
        • Issue 6
        • Issue 7
        • Issue 8 (Election Issue)
        • Issue 9
        • Issue 10
        • Issue 11
        • Issue 12
        • Issue 13 (test)
    • 2015 >
      • Semester 1 (Volume 7) >
        • Issue 1
        • Issue 2
        • Issue 3
        • Issue 4
        • Issue 5
        • Issue 6
        • Issue 7
        • Issue 8
        • Issue 9
        • Issue 10
        • Issue 11
      • Semester 2 (Volume 8) >
        • Issue 1
        • Issue 2
        • Issue 3
        • Issue 4
        • Issue 5
        • Issue 6
        • Issue 7
        • Issue 8
        • Issue 9
        • Issue 10
    • 2014 >
      • Semester 1 (Volume 5) >
        • Issue 1
        • Issue 2
        • Issue 3
        • Issue 4
        • Issue 5
        • Issue 6
        • Issue 7
      • Semester 2 (Volume 6) >
        • Issue 1
        • Issue 2
        • Issue 3
        • Issue 4
        • Issue 6
        • Issue 7
        • Issue 10
        • Issue 12
    • 2013 >
      • Issue 1
      • Issue 2
      • Issue 3
      • Issue 4
      • Issue 5
      • Issue 6
    • 2012 >
      • Semester 1 (Volume 1) >
        • Issue 1
        • Issue 2
        • Issue 3
        • Issue 4
        • Issue 5
        • Issue 6
        • Issue 7
        • Issue 8
        • Issue 9
        • Issue 10
        • Issue 11
        • Issue 12
      • Semester 2 (Volume 2) >
        • Issue 1
        • Issue 2
        • Issue 3
        • Issue 4
        • Issue 5
        • Issue 6
        • Issue 7
        • Issue 8
        • Issue 9
        • Issue 10
        • Issue 11
        • Issue 12