Innovation Minister Kim Carr to attack “second-rate research” after report highlights weaknesses

Federal Industry and Innovation Minister Kim Carr says he has warned Australia’s university chiefs that they need to pick up their game in crucial research areas such as education, business and management, after a report into Australia’s research efforts found just 12 of the 41 universities studied are producing “world class” research.

The Australian Research Council’s Excellence in Research for Australia report examined research efforts across 41 universities and 22 research areas, ranging from environmental and earth sciences through to technology and social science areas such as education, economics and business.

While Australia’s research in technology, physics, immunology, biotechnology and earth sciences (such as geology) were rated as above world standard, the nation’s performance in social science areas was poor.

The report found that in 11 of the 22 research areas monitored, Australia’s efforts were below world standard. The list of below-par areas includes medical and health sciences, built environment and design, economics, law, commerce and education.

Carr acknowledges there are areas of weakness where Australia needs to improve.

“The Australian Government invests billions of dollars in research each year and it is important that we justify this expenditure to the Australian taxpayers. We cannot afford to fund second-rate research,” Carr says.

“When I spoke to senior university officials yesterday, I told them there are weaknesses in the clusters of education-related disciplines, business and management disciplines and applied economics disciplines. This does not mean we lack pockets of excellence in those fields, but these are areas we need to address. And we will address them.”

“Likewise, some universities are underperforming in areas that elsewhere are fields of national strength. This needs to be addressed as well.”

Carr says the report will be used to help the Government and the universities better focus their research spending, although the Government provides universities with funding in blocks – it is then up the universities to allocate these funds to specific research programs.

“I expect that some universities are already in the process of looking at how they can use ERA to reposition their institution.”

Innovation expert Terry Cutler, who authored a ground-breaking report on Australia’s innovation system for the Government in 2009, says the report has highlighted some of the nation’s research problems.

“The decline of humanities and social sciences in Australian universities is a real weakness.”

However, he questions whether the report provides the best way to measure research outputs and success, and argues that the “bureaucratic” scorecard approach tends to measure only traditional research efforts, and struggles to monitor innovative research approaches that cut across disciplines.

“For example, if you researching environmental issues, you want social sciences to be as involved as technology,” Cutler says.

“These sort of scorecards tend to favour really traditional, silo-like areas and they are really hard on emerging cross-disciplinary areas of research.”