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turning the pursuit of truth into the pursuit
of money. Baldly put, the hyper‑focus on
research metrics leads universities to lose
sight of what research actually is.
To understand the invidious nature of the
problem, consider its effects on the main
government tool for promoting research
quality: the Australian Research Council’s
(ARC) Excellence in Research Australia
(ERA) exercise. In peer review disciplines,
ERA has the great advantage that the
research universities actually conduct – the
books, articles and reports actually written
in specific disciplines – is assessed by
national and international experts. Yet even
here research income (remember, an input
in to research) is a factor in determining
the final grade achieved. The reason given
is that research income is a proxy for
research quality.
This too is patently absurd. What kind of
signal is sent by crediting researchers at
one university over researchers at another
simply because they have been funded? In
other areas of life, people are rewarded for
what they do, not what they are paid to do.
Judgements about quality are made when
there are outcomes of quality to judge.
Cometh the hour, cometh the
spieler. This is the modern scholar
the current system promotes: a
researcher‑cum‑entrepreneur who has
an ear to the ground for changes in
government priorities and is willing to
turn a hand to whatever new project is
strategically appealing. They know which
prestigious international professor is willing
to come Down Under for a spot of research
and put their name to an ARC grant at 0.2
for three years.
Will they spend that much time on it? It
doesn’t matter. They say they will, and that
is what gets rewarded.
So it goes on. For a while things look
good. The grants pile up and the money
rolls in. But the reality cannot be avoided
forever. Eventually someone asks: What
is your research agenda? What, in terms
of scholarship, have you have achieved?
And that agenda is revealed for what it is:
a jumble of opportunistic applications and
disconnected results. An empire of scraps.
Research leaders in our universities
need to understand this path for what it
is: a temptation to short-term gain at the
expense of the long-term mission and
international standing of the universities
they serve.
And the Productivity Commission
should not confuse two different things:
a hyper‑focus on competitive research
metrics, with the important public
commitment, via individual researchers and
their institutions, to research itself. ■
Associate Professor Craig Taylor is
director of the Flinders Institute for
Research in the Humanities. Professor
Julian Meyrick is strategic professor
of creative arts at the College of
Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences,
Flinders University.
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