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Australian funding and policy settings would be restructured to force universities to specialise their research, under draft proposals from a landmark review of the country¡¯s innovation system.

A new paper from the Strategic Examination of R&D (Serd) panel says universities could be required to funnel their efforts into nationally significant ¡°focus areas¡± through changes to registration requirements and the mission-based compacts that control their funding.

Grants for research would be oriented around a ¡°pillars¡± funding model that gives priority to four or five long-term ¡°focus areas¡± aligned with Australia¡¯s research strengths, societal needs and ¡°market opportunities¡±.

Research within these focus areas would also attract a ¡°premium rate¡± of indirect research funding to support overheads like labs, technicians, power and consumables.

The Australian Tertiary Education Commission (Atec) would help enforce more ¡°purposeful¡± R&D settings by fostering enrolments in the focus areas, and by negotiating compacts that encourage universities ¡°to build scale and specialisation in research efforts¡±.

A new Atec commissioner, responsible for research and innovation, would be recruited from Industry Innovation and Science Australia, an independent advisory board appointed by the federal government.

The proposals are outlined in the fifth of six ¡°¡± the Serd panel is releasing for feedback before it hands the government its ¡°action plan of recommendations¡± later this year.

Stakeholders have been given until 10 October to provide feedback, and have been asked to be concise. ¡°Your input will refine our reform recommendations in our final report,¡± the paper says. ¡°Tell us which of our proposals will work well. Tell us what could be improved and how.¡±

The paper betrays the panel¡¯s frustration with research settings geared to breadth and volume rather than depth and impact. ¡°The current system encourages research output,¡± it says. ¡°We need to do more to translate those efforts into meaningful impact and real-world outcomes.

¡°Universities spread research funding across many fields. Greater impact could be achieved by specialisation in areas of comparative advantage.¡±

The ¡°threshold standards¡± for higher education regulation are partly to blame, the paper suggests. To retain the right to call themselves ¡°universities¡±, established institutions must conduct research in at least half of the broad fields they teach. ??

As a consequence, 37 of the country¡¯s 41 universities?are active in 12 or more of 22 recognised fields of research.

The paper also blames funding and performance frameworks which prioritise volume and citations at the expense of collaboration and innovation. It says university incentives must ¡°better recognise translational impact, industry engagement and societal benefit¡±.

Australia stands out for its segregated research system, the paper says. About 45 per cent of the R&D workforce is employed in the business sector, ¡°well below¡± an OECD average of 68 per cent.

Australian universities perform dismally in commercialising their research efforts, and US universities co-author over nine times as many publications with industry partners.

¡°We [must] uphold and strengthen the quality of our research while reorienting the system to engage with national priorities and increase our use of knowledge to achieve economic, social and cultural outcomes,¡± the paper says.

Science minister Tim Ayres has indicated that the government will be paying close attention to the review. ¡°At the end of it, there are going to be some pretty challenging calls to make about the way the whole system works,¡± he told the Australian Financial Review¡¯s Higher Education Summit last month.

john.ross@timeshighereducation.com