Knowledge and Innovation: A policy statement on research and research training

5.         Accountability and quality assurance

Enhanced accountability for the expenditure of public funds and quality assurance mechanisms will be important features of the Government’s new framework. This approach is consistent with the Government’s commitment to strengthening the international competitiveness of our higher education institutions while reducing regulation and intervention in universities’ activities.

The discussion paper identified the need for increased transparency in the setting and reporting of institutions’ goals for research and research training and highlighted the importance of adopting a more strategic approach to the management of these activities. Universities currently do not have to report publicly on their plans for the use of public funding for research and research training, nor on the measures they use for assessing their success in achieving those goals.

The discussion paper sought to facilitate institutional planning and goal setting by requiring a Research and Research Training Management Plan from each institution seeking Government funding for its research activities. The plans would be published and provide a snapshot of the way each institution directs its research efforts, its areas of strength, and how it performs in those areas. They would provide an overview of each institution’s distinctive contribution to the national research and innovation systems and inform prospective students, collaborative research partners and industry, as to the way each institution has chosen to direct its research and research training activities.

There has been universal support for this element of the reforms, and indeed, many institutions already have research plans along the lines envisaged in the discussion paper. Those institutions which have already chosen to focus their research activities in line with institutional goals, and already have them clearly articulated, should be well placed under the new arrangements. Indeed, this process will help to give greater public disclosure to research strengths within institutions that are otherwise poorly recognised.

The process is not intended to be a prescriptive one, and the Government will not be seeking to conduct detailed audits of the Research and Research Training Management Plans. Rather, the process will provide for an on-going dialogue with institutions on accountability for public funds and provide a benchmark for the verification and assurance of the quality of research and research training at the national level (see below). The emphasis will be on the strategies institutions propose to manage their research and research training activities, and their success against those strategies.

Core elements that institutions are expected to report on in their research plans include:

• the operating environment for research and research training, including the institution’s human and physical resources, and areas of research strength;

• proposed future directions for research and research training and how these link to the university’s strategic plan;

• arrangements for ensuring a quality research training experience for research students;

• collaboration with other institutions, industry and other bodies;

• management of commercialisation, intellectual property and contractual arrangements;

• quality assurance mechanisms for self-assessment;

• a review of recent past research performance;

• graduate outcomes both in terms of attributes and employment; and

• research active members of staff and their research outputs and achievements.

The last point will be important in ensuring institutions’ research claims have a strong grounding in the activities and performance of their staff. The outputs and achievements could include researchers’ top publications or exhibited works, success in attracting external funding, commercialisation activities, and recognition through winning prominent prizes, awards, or appointments. This approach will provide a transparent and accountable mechanism whereby institutions publicly identify the breadth and depth of their research strengths.

In a world in which geographic barriers to the provision of education and research are breaking down, the reputation and quality of universities, both individually, and collectively at the national level, become critical. Universities and governments around the globe have embraced a wide range of approaches to assure the quality of their teaching and research activities. In Australia, many institutions formally evaluate their programmes through external assessment involving academic peers and industry representatives. All institutions seek feedback through mechanisms such as the Course Experience Questionnaire and the Graduate Destination Survey. Many universities are benchmarking their research capabilities and outputs with those of comparable institutions and some are participating in national and international networks. At the national level, each university prepares an annual quality assurance and improvement plan covering their teaching, research and other activities. The Government publishes these plans annually.

The issue of verifying the quality of research and research training supported by the Institutional Grants and research-training schemes attracted considerable comment during the consultation period following the release of the discussion paper. After considering a range of alternative approaches designed to strengthen the research quality framework, the Government has developed a multi-faceted approach that draws on the best features of each model. In developing its framework for quality verification, the Government has been guided by the following principles:

• rigour, credibility and transparency;

• minimal intrusion in the activities of institutions;

• ability to treat all fields of research, including interdisciplinary, cross-disciplinary, collaborative and emerging fields of research, in a fair and consistent manner;

• responsiveness to the interests and concerns of the broader community, including the national innovation system;

• a high degree of efficiency for both the Government and universities; and

• consistency with the Government’s broad framework for quality assurance in higher education.

The first element of the Government’s approach to quality assurance is the inclusion of objective output measures in the mechanisms to allocate funds to institutions. A modified publications index will be incorporated in the formulae to allocate funds for the Institutional Block Grants and research training schemes. This will be supplemented by the decision to retain the Research Infrastructure Block Grants scheme as a separate programme, with funding allocations dependent upon institutions’ success in attracting national competitive grants. Together, these measures ensure that each of the performance-based funding schemes will directly acknowledge and reward high-quality research.

These objective measures will be backed up by an approach involving a more subjective verification of research quality under the new quality assurance framework being developed for higher education. The Government recently announced the establishment of, in cooperation with State and Territory governments, an independent Australian University Quality Agency to audit the quality of higher education institutions.

Under this framework, the new Agency will review claims made by universities concerning their teaching and research performance. The Agency will adopt a whole-of-institution focus in verifying such claims. Research and research training will be reviewed by the Agency as part of this process, which will verify the claims made by institutions in their Research and Research Training Management Plans. If the process were to highlight areas where an institution’s claims could not be substantiated, a more in-depth assessment of its research and research training activity would be conducted. In this case the Agency will establish, as necessary, independent expert panels drawn from nominees of institutions, the ARC, the National Health and Medical Research Council, the Learned Academies, research users and Government.

The results of the verification process will be reported by the national Agency, which will publish the findings to aid transparency and accountability. It is not the Government’s intention to directly link the outcomes of this process with funding levels. However, if in the course of this process an institution is found wanting and has failed to demonstrate that it can improve its performance in a reasonable time, the Government may determine that it forfeits its eligibility for public funding for teaching and/or research training activities. Research granting agencies may have regard to reports of the quality assessments but will retain the discretion to consider the merits of individual and team applications for grants.

The Government will consult widely to develop the processes for implementing this approach.