VC’S CORNER
campusreview.com.au
exercise demonstrated clearly that there is
research ranked well above world standard
across the Australian university sector.
The country has grown a high-performing
research enterprise in which excellence
has been found to be delivered by young
universities across the regions of Australia
as well as by the older, well-established
institutions across our major cities. Even so,
many of us recall the analyses professor Ian
Chubb, as our then-chief scientist, carried
out that showed while our research citation
rate is above the world average, it is below
the European average. Now is not the time
for complacency or taking our foot off the
accelerator, in a world in which research
excellence underpins the transition from
economies built on traditional industries to
ones built on world-class innovation.
It also has to be said that in the area of
innovation, there is a level of optimism
built on the back of December’s National
Innovation and Science Agenda (NISA). This
could be viewed as surprising, given the
appalling statistics around business-university
engagement and the low proportion of PhDs
Australian businesses employ. It may be that
this optimism is simply an expression of sheer
relief that, having come so close over the