SUBMISSION TO THE 1997 REVIEW OF HIGHER EDUCATION FINANCING AND POLICY
(Relevant to Theme Five)
I. A. CLARK
Summary
This submission addresses the efficiency and
effectiveness of the way in which public funds are applied to research in
higher education institutions. It argues that:
- The Institute of Advanced Studies at the Australian National University
would provide much better outcomes if it were to change to employing
researchers on renewable merit-based cycles instead of permanent tenure. It is
the only component of the government-funded research effort within the
university system that awards tenure.
- A mechanism should be devised to ensure that the infrastructure funding
provided by the Government to universities to pay for the indirect costs of
conducting government-funded research is actually used for this purpose. A
model is suggested.
1. Tenure in the Institute of Advanced Studies
This submission does not address the wider issue of tenure in
the traditional university undergraduate setting. It limits itself to arguing
that the IAS, a organisation that uniquely within the Australian university
system is concerned only with research, would use the public funds it receives
more efficiently and effectively by ceasing to employ researchers on permanent
tenure.
History of tenure in the Institute of Advanced Studies
As a consequence of discussions between the Australian Government, Howard
Florey, and other scientific notables of the time, four government-funded
research institutes, collectively called the Australian National University,
were planned at Acton in the late 1940's, and became reality by the early
1950's. In 1960 these four Research Schools, as they were called, began to be
referred to as the Institute of Advanced Studies (IAS) within the ANU, and the
name Australian National University began to encompass the Canberra University
College, an offshoot of Melbourne University (now the undergraduate part of the
ANU, termed The Faculties). Three other Research Schools were added over the
next thirteen years.
But were the Research Schools ever universities? In reality they have always
been more like research institutes than universities, in the sense that these
words are understood in the rest of Australia. Howard Florey, by then already
a Nobel Prize winner, referred in 1956 to the "ANU", ie the Research Schools
that then existed, as"a new type of "University"[his quotation marks],
if indeed it should be so called, without exact parallel elsewhere".
(Attachment, p. 22).
He went on to say:
"ideas of general organisation of the (then) ANU seem to be dominated by the
outlook of those who are at best only acquainted with Universities whose
primary function is to teach undergraduates. It is quite a different
problem to conduct a research institution"
(Attachment, p. 22; my underlining).
He also regarded 5 year renewability on merit, not permanent tenure, as normal
for staff engaged in full-time research (Attachment, p.10). Moreover, he
recorded (Attachment, p. 25) his view that if the John Curtin School of Medical
Research (JCSMR) had been set up as an autonomous institution without
university ties its path would have been much easier. So it is clear that the
man who suggested the concept of the JCSMR (the first of the Research Schools),
and designed its building, saw it as a research institute, not at all a
conventional university with staff employed on university conditions.
Howard Florey declined to become the first Director of the JCSMR, and his
ideas were not adopted. In his absence, the Research Schools, while continuing
to act like research institutes, traded on the presence of the word
"university" in their collective title and adopted staffing policies (ie
security of tenure) previously seen only in universities that teach
undergraduates. The JCSMR nicely demonstrates the consequences of this, in
that seven or eight "sister" medical research institutes exist around
Australia, each competing directly with the JCSMR scientifically, and for
scientific staff and PhD students. The only identifiable differences between
these institutes and the JCSMR are (as pointed out by the 1990 Stephen
Committee Inquiry) that they are affiliated with a university rather than being
an integral part of it (though many are within university grounds), and that
staffing is through renewability-on-merit instead of tenure. As reasoned
below, this has made them much more effective users of government research
dollars.
Consequences of Tenure in the Institute of Advanced Studies
Nowadays, the Research Schools within the IAS have a core of tenured
scientific staff (about a half the total), most of the others being, as a
matter of policy, employed for a limited and non-renewable period only. This
second category arose because many young people were given tenured appointments
during the period of expansion in the 1960's, (often just after completing
their PhD's on site), and quickly filled all available positions. This forced
almost all subsequent recruitment (ie over the past twenty years of plateau
funding, when science was much more competitive) to be made into the ranks of
the limited-duration group. These individuals have been routinely discharged
as time-expired, irrespective of merit, output or originality, because all
available "real jobs" were already occupied by tenured staff who were, and
still are, protected by their contracts from being ousted by more competitive
new arrivals.
The extremes that this miscalculation has led to can best be illustrated by
noting that the recent Nobel Laureate for Medicine, and 1997 Australian of the
Year, Peter Doherty, was forced by these rules to leave the JCSMR in the
mid-1970's, a few years after he had done the work for which he has recently
been awarded the Nobel Prize. His work was acknowledged to be brilliant at the
time, but IAS rules said, in effect, that the security of tenured staff could
not be threatened by the quality of work done by non-tenured staff. If the
JCSMR was run along the same tenure-free, renewable-on-merit lines as the other
medical research institutes in Australia, the IAS would have retained him on
the staff, and thus greatly improved its competitiveness and reputation, as
well as kudos after the Prize was awarded. Thus, Peter Doherty's Nobel award
is a telling example of how it would be in the interests of the standards of
the IAS, and effectiveness of the money spent on it, if staff were
competitively evaluated by peer review and cyclically renewed, on merit, as is
usual elsewhere in Australia's government-funded research community. Peter
Doherty said as much at the National Press Club address on 16th April last. As
a footnote, some well-intentioned individuals within the IAS have succeeded in
introducing the concept of renewable-on-merit positions in recent years, but
this option is rarely used, and then not in competition with tenured members of
staff . Most Research Schools ignore its existence, and continue to award
tenure to fill vacanies that arise as older tenured staff retire.
The Stephen Committee of 1990, the subsequent Industry Commission Report and
the recent Boardman Committee Review have all recommended renewability on merit
instead of tenure in the IAS. Yet it has not been adopted, presumably because
the financial security of those who would be required to instigate this change,
were it to be done voluntarily by the ANU, would be personally affected. Yet
these people are aware that NH&MRC and ARC Fellowship Conditions of
Employment, which include renewability-on-merit, not tenure, are considered
normal for the rest of the full-time university researchers in Australia, ie
those outside the IAS. The double standard that currently operates between the
IAS and the rest of Australia's government-funded full-time researchers is
exemplified by tenured IAS staff sitting on committees of ARC and NH&MRC
and determining whether government-funded researchers elsewhere in the
university system (who may well have better international scientific
reputations and performance records, including more international
collaborations, than they do) should be given another cycle of funding. With
this vast differential in accountability being obvious to all concerned, it
must require a considerable talent for hypocrisy to perform this task well.
Arguments used by the IAS to retain tenure
Arguments to retain tenure within the IAS ignore that times have changed.
Forty years ago, when the rules by which the Research Schools are run were
established, there were not many scientists, and funding was plentiful. In
contrast, the various competitive evaluation systems have been developed and
fine-tuned over a period in which the number of scientists aspiring to be
funded far exceeds the funds available, allowing the funds that they manage to
be spent as wisely as possible. Tenure, as exists within the IAS, removes the
ability to shift scarce resources to where they are likely to be most
effective. Nevertheless the IAS is not likely to give up tenure without a
fight, and its three major arguments for its retention are as follows.
Argument 1. A need for plurality of funding systems.
There is already plurality of funding systems in this country. All
government-provided, non-IAS sources of research funding in Australian
universities, be they NH&MRC, ARC or a CRC (though these systems have
various differences), require regular evidence of high quality output and
productivity before they will fund the salaries and maintenance costs of
full-time researchers for the next cycle, allowing decisions to be made on how
and where the limited funds available can be most effectively spent. The only
funding source in Australia that will make commitments to pay full-time
researchers' salaries to retirement age, irrespective of their current merit or
productivity, is the one that operates in the IAS. I see no motive for the IAS
to retain its current brand of plurality (ie, retention of its present system)
other than it wants to retain tenure, which is unique to its particular style
of full-time research within the university system. While sold as plurality of
funding, it is actually plurality of the standards required in order to
continue to attract salary and maintenance funding from the government.
Tenure has two penalties for any system of funding scientists in a Centre of
Excellence, such as the IAS. One penalty is the cost of continuing to employ
staff who fail to fulfil the promise they displayed at the time they were
appointed, and the other is the opportunity cost associated with being obliged,
in order to protect tenured staff from competition, to terminate younger staff
that any rational system would strive to retain. As noted above, Peter Doherty
would have been retained in the Australian scientific community had he done his
Nobel Prize-winning work elsewhere in the country, where the normal competitive
processes apply. I see no logic in the argument, variously put about, that the
presence of tenure in the IAS somehow created the conditions that made it
possible for Peter Doherty to do his prize winning work. Various groups around
the country do basic immunological research, and try to foster the conditions
in which original thinkers can flourish. Success goes to where the best
original thinkers happen to be located. The issue is the presence of a
mechanism to retain such people at a time of plateau or decreasing funding.
Argument 2. The uniquely long-term, risky nature of IAS research.
It is often asserted that the special nature of the work done by IAS staff
requires them to have uniquely long-term tenure compared to other full-time
researchers in Australia. This argument falls down when one examines the
extensive list of the IAS's scientific collaborations in universities around
the country, including the undergraduate part of the ANU. By definition these
collaborators are not at the IAS, so to be a full-time researcher they must be
funded through a CRC, the ARC, NH&MRC or some similar short-term
competitive source. Since they are collaborating with IAS staff, it follows
that their research shares the same goals, ie is equally long-term and risky
(scientifically or politically), as that of their collaborative partners within
the IAS. In short, any argument for special treatment for the IAS on the
grounds of the nature of their work must equally apply to their CRC, ARC and
NH&MRC-funded collaborators throughout Australia. Yet these researchers,
rightly in my view, and unlike their IAS counterparts, do not have tenure.
Argument 3. "We are university staff, and university staff are tenured."
The opportunity for tenured lecturing staff in undergraduate universities to
do research contrasts greatly to that of tenured staff in the IAS, in that any
government-funded research that lecturers aspire to undertake is funded only if
it is shown, by Australia-wide competition, to meet ARC, NH&MRC, or CRC
standards. Thus their opportunity to do government-funded research is
carefully vetted by external peer review procedures that determine whether the
money is best spent there or elsewhere in the country. In contrast, research
done by tenured staff within the IAS does not have to pass this external test
of quality before it is funded. This means that in practice a higher standard
is nowadays expected of lecturing staff in undergraduate universities before
they are funded to do research than is required of the tenured full-time
researchers that staff the IAS, whose mere presence guarantees them research
funds. Lecturers' tenure, in contrast, is not tied to opportunities to carry
out government-funded research. The IAS would therefore be a far more
effective and efficient consumer of government research dollars if it had the
staffing system of a research institute, not the tenure system otherwise
associated only with lecturer positions at undergraduate universities. As
Florey noted (page 1), it is a quite different problem to conduct a
research institute. Clearly, he recognised that a poorly-performing tenured
researcher with guaranteed research funding represents an immense opportunity
cost over a working lifetime.
Conclusions regarding tenure in the IAS
The IAS, as a major consumer of government research funds in Australia, should
not be allowed to continue to remain exempt from the normal competitive
processes that apply to others receiving such funding. These competitive
processes involve salary costs, the major component of research funding.
Through retention of permanent tenure, the IAS is at present the only full-time
research effort funded by the government within the university system that is
exempt from these processes. Given the size of the operation (as large as the
62 CRC's combined, in terms of government investment), the absolute gain in
efficiency would be very great if tenure were abolished in the Institute of
Advanced Studies.
(As a footnote, if tenure is phased out of the IAS only as tenured staff
retire it cannot bear fruit for some time, since a considerable number of them
have many years before retirement. Over this period the IAS would become a
less and less effective user of the limited funds available for research within
the university sector. The overnight complete conversion the Queensland
Institute of Medical Research undertook when it voluntarily changed to
NH&MRC conditions in the mid-1980's is an instructive model.)
2. Effective Targeting of Research Infrastructure Funding.
The provision and targeted application of the money needed to
cover the indirect cost of doing research in universities, termed
infrastructure funding, is a critical issue in the competitiveness of research,
since world-class research requires world-class infrastructure. The current
arrangements within Australia's universities are quite inadequate, in that
these funds are currently given to the universities in a block, with minimal
policing of the small amount of accountability built into the current model.
In practice it is largely left to universities themselves to dispense these
funds according to their own priorities and perceptions. These are often
coloured by their belief that this money is theirs by right, given the history
of the "claw-back" procedure that largely generated the research infrastructure
funding system in 1989. Universities still show little acceptance of the
reality that the presence of this money on their books is now tightly tied to
the success, as judged by their contribution to the composite research index,
of the researchers housed within that university, ie to their actual need for
research infrastructure.
There is recent evidence from a survey run by the National Association of
NH&MRC Research Fellows, of 50 university departments in which NH&MRC
Research Fellows are housed across the country that the present system is very
ineffective at getting the money to where it is needed. As the attached
summary indicates, the survey focussed on 16 key indirect expenditure items
without which the NH&MRC-funded researcher cannot operate, and which the
NH&MRC expects to be provided by the university through the
DEETYA-administered infrastructure system. In many, often most, cases the
university demands that researchers provide these items out of their
competitively won grants, which are awarded to them by the granting body on the
stipulation that the money is to be used to cover only the direct cost of
conducting their research. When universities succeed in this demand (the grant
holder at present has little bargaining power) they are effectively double
dipping into government funds, and the competitively-funded research suffers
accordingly. A variation that sometimes operates (eg at the ANU) is to make
departments compete against each other before they can access a proportion of
the infrastructure funds attracted to the university by grants that staff in
that department have already won in open competition. Considerable funds can
thus be moved, for whatever purpose, to departments that have contributed
little to the composite research index. This demonstrates that universities
refuse to accept that this money is not theirs to spend as they choose.
For these reasons the mechanism of distribution needs to be altered so that
sufficient of the infrastructure funds actually reaches its intended
destination, whether this be the university department housing the grant, and
therefore actually incurring the cost of its presence, or research
infrastructure of use to all researchers, such as libraries. It is common
knowledge that universities are coming under the combined financial pressures
of unfunded enterprise bargaining salary increases and the cuts in their total
funding from government. They show every sign of increasingly using the
infrastructure monies to fill these gaps rather than their intended purpose of
paying for the indirect costs of research.
One course of action would be to take much of these funds out of the hands of
the universities and award them as overheads, to principal investigators, as
was done, for these reasons, a few years ago with the UK Research Councils.
The university can then charge the grant holders for standard services at set
rates, to be deducted with the principal investigators' agreement. This would
ensure that this funding was used for its intended purpose of covering the
indirect costs of doing government-funded (NH&MRC, ARC etc.) research
rather than, in effect, largely being consumed to supplement universities'
operating grants.
Conclusions re allocation of research infrastructure funding
In order to achieve the best outcomes for the public funds spent on research
in universities, the funding intended to cover the indirect costs of this
enterprise (infrastructure funding) should be much more precisely targeted.
This can best be achieved only by devising mechanisms that avoid this funding
going to universities in a block, where it can then be used to cover shortfalls
arising from causes unrelated to research. Instead, it should be directly
channelled to the parts of the university where the competitively evaluated
research that attracted this infrastructure funding is taking place. A model
that operates elsewhere is outlined.
Ian A. Clark BVSc (Q'ld) PhD (Lond.) DSc (Lond.)
NH&MRC Principal Research Fellow
Science Faculty
Australian National University
ian.clark@anu.edu.au
Fax 06 249.0313
Ph. 06.249.4363
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