Otago University rocks boat, misses out

By SIMON COLLINS

Otago University rocked the Government at the opening session of the state-backed Innovate conference in Christchurch yesterday by asking for research funding to be redirected to just two or three "research-intensive universities".

The proposal, made by Otago Vice-Chancellor Graeme Fogelberg with two Cabinet ministers on stage, came on the same day that Prime Minister Helen Clark, in Auckland, announced funding for five new centres of research excellence - none of them at Otago.

Tertiary Education Minister Steve Maharey is expected to respond when he chairs a session at the two-day conference today.

Otago is co-sponsoring the $1 million conference with a contribution of $100,000. The Government has put up $500,000, and private interests have chipped in the other $400,000 in either cash or kind - including full live television cover on Sky's Channel 30 and on TVNZ's website at www.nzoom.co.nz

Dr Fogelberg said New Zealand could not afford to spread its research effort across eight universities as at present.

"At 4 million people, our quota for truly research-intensive universities is about two, or at the very most, three," he said.

"I realise that this is not a very happy proposition for many to contemplate. After all, we have structured our university system in an ill-fated attempt to be all things to all people - which would be fine if we had the people and the resources to support such an idealised scheme. But we don't."



Dr Fogelberg proposed full tax deductibility for donations to university research, instead of the present capped rebate.

He endorsed proposals by the Tertiary Education Advisory Commission to allocate grants under a system in which state cash would be allocated partly on the basis of the commercial revenue each university earned from research contracts.

Otago and Auckland Universities would be the major winners under such a system, and are the two obvious candidates if New Zealand were to have only two "research-intensive universities".

Both receive tens of millions in commercial research income a year through their medical schools.

But Otago missed out on getting any of the centres of research excellence announced yesterday. Auckland will get three of the new centres, and Massey and Victoria Universities one each.

Deputy Prime Minister Jim Anderton said that although last year's Catching the Knowledge Wave conference was a magnificent event, he was disturbed "that we kept being lectured about how much more innovative and creative we have to be in New Zealand - by people from overseas who obviously had no idea how innovative and creative New Zealand was."

The Innovate conference has drawn more than 700 participants, including many small business managers, to hear a lineup of some of New Zealand's leading businesses and creative talent. The event will be closed by Helen Clark this afternoon.

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