The Watt review fails to address the concerns of postgraduates

4 December 2015 – The Council of Australian Postgraduate Associations (CAPA) is frustrated by the lazy recommendations for research training put forward by the report on Research Policy and Funding Arrangements (a.k.a. the Watt review). The report has failed to address key concerns raised by CAPA in its submission, the need to develop better measures for quality research training, that research income is not sensitive to the activity of research training and that minimum standards must be set if the use of research training funds are deregulated.

‘To our great disappointment the report proceeds by recommending that the three research training funding schemes, the Research Training Scheme (RTS), the Australian Postgraduate Award (APA), and the International Postgraduate Research Scholarships scheme (IPRS) be lumped into one ‘flexible’ pool. It goes on to recommend deregulation of the rules governing those schemes, but provides no thought as to how the serious issues this will create are to be handled’ said Harry Rolf the National President.

CAPA supports the limited deregulation of the APA scheme, where the current stipend rate of $25,849 pa is below both the minimum wage and the poverty line.

‘Giving universities flexibility to increase stipends, the discretion to offer then to part-time postgraduates and increase their duration and amount are all good outcomes. But complete deregulation could see universities dropping the rates and durations even lower or cutting part-time arrangements all together. Minimum standards must be set for the allocation of research training funds towards scholarships and resources for postgraduates’.

Further the report recommends that the funding formula be changed from 40% Student Completions, 50% Research Income, 10% Publications to 50% Student Completions and 50% Research Income.

While CAPA agrees with the justification that publications are not an effective measure of the research training environment within a university neither is research income. High level research income data from the HERDC is not sensitive to research training, and quality research is not a clear indicator of quality research training.

‘For the formula to be appropriate it must include a measure of quality for research training. Quality can take many forms, but four key areas are consistently cited, supervision, minimum resources, collegial environment and access to research funding. The reality is that the busiest most successful researchers may have the least time and resources to provide high quality research training’.

The 50:50 weighting of HERDC income Category 1 and Category 2-4 recommended for the measurement of Research Income by the report is also not sensitive to the activities of postgraduate students. Many postgraduate students collaborate extensively during their degrees, they publish papers, work within a university, with industry and may even end up generating Intellectual Property if they have not already left to commercialise their research.

‘The point here is that none of this activity is captured by research income data, the contributions of postgraduate students, a possible indicator of quality training outcomes is completely overlooked. One place where this contribution can be seen and measured is through publications, where co-author networks and their affiliations provide detailed insights into the engagement taking place. Attending conferences to present a publication also creates engagement, but if the incentive for postgraduates to publish is diminished then it follows that so too will this engagement’.

‘It is our view that if changes are to be made to research training they must address the issues at hand, the current system is not broken but it could easily be. CAPA has over 35 years of collective experience relating directly to research training in Australia, I would hope that our concerns are taken seriously by the sector and in any decisions that are made’ Concluded Harry Rolf.

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