The ABCs of Government Funding for University Research by Prof Ray Cooksey, Acting PVC (Research)
Colleagues, I’d like to explore the current language of research funding and performance, as employed by the Commonwealth Government. It is a language populated by acronyms that mask some rather complicated underlying processes for deciding how universities will be funded for research in 2010 and beyond by the government,. I thought it might be useful to unpack some of these acronyms and indicate what they might mean for UNE.
ACG refers to Australian Competitive Grants for research. It refers to any research grant income obtained by competitive means in accordance with rules set by the Commonwealth Government. Each year, DIISR (Department of Industry, Innovation, Science and Research) publishes an updated list of all research grant schemes that qualify as ACGs, including ARC (Australian Research Council) grants and many other types of grants. Such grants are also called ‘Category 1″ grants. In 2008, about 34% of our total research grant income was from qualifying ACGs. The remaining 66% was from other research grant funding sources, including other public sector research income (Category 2), industry and other research income(Category 3) and CRC research income (Category 4) [collectively known as non-ACG].
RTS refers to the Research Training Scheme. This is the pool of research funding to be used to support research training for domestic students undertaking Masters and Doctoral degrees by research. This funding amount is calculated using a combination of research income, publications and HDR (Higher Degree Research) completions. There are no planned changes to this scheme.
JRE refers to the Joint Research Engagement scheme. It is the new version of the old IGS (Institutional Grants Scheme). When calculating IGS income for a university, funding from all four research grant categories was counted, as were publications and HDR student load. The JRE is intended to reward seeking of funding from sources that enhance collaborative research engagement with industries and end-users of research. Accordingly, the plan is that JRE research income will be calculated from category 2, 3 and 4 sources; ACG income will not be counted. We already do fairly well in these non-ACG categories of research income and our rural and regional and applied focus in a number of areas should enhance our outcomes here.
ERA refers to the Excellence in Research in Australia initiative. We have already had two practice encounters with the ERA this year with respect to the PCE (Physics, Chemistry and Earth Sciences) and HCA (Humanities and Creative Arts) discipline clusters. It is the scheme the Commonwealth Government will use to assess research quality in the university sector. Volume of research activity, publications against ranked outlets, citation analyses, peer review and research income figure prominently in ERA as do a limited set of applied measures. Next year, the full set of 8 discipline clusters will be assessed and it is likely that some esteem measures will also be included (this last is currently out to universities for consultation). ERA outcomes will help inform the research funding decisions to be made by the Commonwealth Government. Unfortunately, the weak point of the ERA scheme, insensitivity to a range of non-publication related research outcomes, will not do UNE any favours.
TC refers to the Transparent Costing scheme. It is the system (not yet finalised) through which universities will track and the Commonwealth Government will assess the allowable indirect costs that a university claims it incurs in carrying out ACG activities and in meeting other research performance targets. This assessment will then feed into the calculation of the “Excellence” portion of SRE funding (see below). This process should help to remove some impediments to seeking ACG research funding because indirect costs could not be recovered. Universities will receive some funding in 2010 to help in designing their TC systems to support this reporting scheme. The more ACG funded research we undertake, the better our return on TC should be.
SRE refers to the Sustainable Research Excellence initiative. It is the planned evolution of the government’s system for calculating and allocating research infrastructure block funding to universities and is intended to help universities to better meet the indirect costs of research. The plan embodies three suggested (not yet finalised) components: (1) 20% of funding would be calculated using the current RIBG (Research Infrastructure Block Grant) calculation formula; (2) 13% of funding would be identified as “Incentive”, linked to how much ACG income a university generates up to a cutoff point of $2.5 million dollars; and (3) 67% of funding would be identified as “Excellence”, linked to how much ACG income a university generates beyond the cutoff point of $2.5 million dollars, a university’s report on its TC for research and on targets identified by the ERA scheme. Access to the Incentive and Excellence funding pathways is conditional on the university agreeing to participate in both the TC and ERA schemes - UNE will certainly agree to these conditions. The SRE initiative will form an essential component of mission-based compacts, which each university will negotiate with the Commonwealth Government each year from 2010.
One important implication hidden in amongst these acronyms is the increasing tension that will result from pursuing ACG funding to enhance outcomes in the TC and the SRE schemes on the one hand and pursuing non-ACG funding to enhance outcomes in the new JRE scheme on the other. We certainly live in ‘interesting’ times!