campusreview.com.au
industry & reseArch
social engagement and global impact. There is an important
component that is about social justice, equality and diversity. But
also there is an important component about knowledge transfer.
It is about the innovation agenda.
To delivery our strategy, we do need to generate large sums
of funding and we’re not relying on government to provide all
or a large proportion of that. Universities have always looked
elsewhere, but I think government has an important contribution
to make. We generate some of our funding through domestic
student fees and a large amount through international student
fees. We have partnerships with industry, we have philanthropic
funding, we have all sorts of different streams of funding. We
will continue to maintain as diversified a funding stream as
possible. But even in that context, government has an extremely
important role to play in the future of universities and in driving the
innovation agenda.
What is UNSW doing to create the right culture for research and
industry collaboration?
With Australian Government investment into universities facing
potential cuts, is this also about diversifying the revenue streams
for research?
That’s an interesting question and investment is the right
term. I hope we’re not going to see a decrease in government
investment in research in Australian universities. I think that would
be a serious mistake. We published a report last year that we
commissioned from Deloitte’s – Universities Australia published a
similar report also commissioned from Deloitte’s – which showed
the research know-how that Australian universities generate,
which is pushed out into the economy through partnerships with
companies and all sorts of other ways, generates $160 billion
a year for Australian GDP. That’s 10 per cent of GDP, about the
same as the mining industry.
So the funding that government in Australia provides for
research is not a gift or a charitable donation. It’s an investment.
That’s an important point. Without that funding for basic science
research, the whole of the innovation agenda just won’t work.
It’s worth just reflecting on other parts of the world where the
innovation agenda has worked effectively. You can see examples
in Silicon Valley, in Israel, in Singapore, and in China. In all of
those places, the success of the innovation agenda has depended
on government bringing people together – not just investing
but bringing people together