The innovation strategy means a shakeup for the scientists, writes SIMON COLLINS
After 15 years of almost constant restructuring, the scientific community is in for more upheaval after Prime Minister Helen Clark's innovation package this week.
This time there may be a silver lining: the Government may put more money into research, and into higher education generally.
But the extra money is aimed at a few centres of excellence - leaving some institutions, especially polytechnics, potentially worse off.
Details will not be known until the Budget in mid-year. What is known is that there are at least three drivers of change.
First is a belief, expressed by the Tertiary Education Advisory Commission (Teac) last year, that New Zealand should concentrate its limited research budget on a few key fields in a few world-class institutions, instead of scattering resources to every degree course.
Second, the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology (Forst), which allocates most of the state research budget, has tightened its requirement that spending should be "focused on maximising economic return for New Zealand".
And third, Helen Clark has added the criterion that state investment should focus on three priority sectors: biotechnology, information and communications technology (ICT) and "creative industries".
As Science Minister Pete Hodgson puts it: "When it comes to centres of research excellence, the body that is picking those, although its primary criterion is excellence, will nonetheless be informed by the Government's announcement on Tuesday that it wants to pay a lot of attention to the target sectors."
The Royal Society is not so sure. A senior associate, Dr Doug Crump, says those who submitted proposals for centres of research excellence in December might not have bothered if they knew that the criterion of "excellence" would be overridden by preference for only three sectors.
"When you run a competition, you can't change the rules halfway."
The outcome of these changes is uncertain. But for a country which %aspires to be "innovative", it is crucial.
%This year, the Government is spending $486 million in the Research, Science and Technology budget. University research (with some overlap in the figures) totals just over $400 million.
But low business spending on research - only 0.3 per cent of the national income, against an OECD average of 1.5 per cent - made New Zealand's total research spending in 1997 only 1.1 per cent of our income, half the OECD average.
Historically, our low business spending on research has been understandable, because most of our businesses are small.
But it is precisely our small scale that led Teac to recommend concentrating our small research effort into a few areas where we can make a difference.
As well as a few "centres of research excellence", it proposed allocating most public funds for university research on the basis of external reviews of their quality of research, numbers of postgraduate degrees and the amount of external research funds they won from other public and private sources.
The Government has adopted the idea of centres of research excellence, budgeting $10 million in 2002-03, rising to $13 million a year later, for three to six centres, which the Royal Society is selecting this month.
Six panels of national and overseas experts have already reduced the 45 applications (see box) to a shortlist of fewer than 20, based on the "excellence" of their research to date, the likelihood that they will advance knowledge and the extent to which they will contribute to developing a "knowledge society" through academic and community links.
The shortlist is secret because the final selection committee, chaired by former Governor-General Sir Paul Reeves, will have the right to revive applications that did not make it past the expert panels.
The committee meets in Wellington today to cut the list down further to about 10 proposed centres, which will be visited next week before a final choice is made by March 4.
Helen Clark's package came just in time because, unlike the expert panels, this committee is required under the original rules to consider each centre's "contribution to New Zealand's future development" including the economy, innovation, society, the environment and fulfilling the Treaty of Waitangi.
Although in theory any tertiary institution could propose a centre of research excellence, in practice only five of the 45 proposals came from outside the universities.
And the universities themselves appear to have overlooked possible centres of excellence in design and other "creative industries".
This oversight reflects a wider problem with the whole Teac idea of concentrating public funds on a few top institutions, partly on the basis of augmenting their external research financing.
As Teac itself notes, external research contracts in New Zealand overwhelmingly favour the two universities with medical schools, Auckland and Otago. Medicine gets 57 per cent of Auckland University's commercial research revenue, and 59 per cent of its grants from public bodies.
Jim Doyle of the Association of Polytechnics says the Teac proposal is about "the elite end of the sector plundering resources that are quite frankly needed elsewhere".
"Having more postgraduate research is not going to catapult us into the top half of the OECD.
"If you looked at the whole education system and asked where is the biggest single problem, I think it is the fact that there are 10,000 to 15,000 young people leaving our school system without a single qualification [out of about 50,000 school-leavers]."
The Government has not yet endorsed the specific Teac proposal, and is expected to pass the ball to the Tertiary Education Commission, which starts work in mid-year.
But its draft Tertiary Education Strategy, which is open for submissions on the Ministry of Education website until February 28, endorses the principle of "a more focused tertiary research investment through world-class clusters of specialisation and networks".
Despite a tradition of academic freedom, the strategy proposes "increased central steering of research funding, or at least more explicit incentives".
"This may ultimately entail some rationalisation of research areas among providers," it warns.
The message is even more explicit for Forst-funded research.
Forst's statement of intent for 2001-04 says scientists seeking grants will need to show how their research will develop "to the point where the results are made useful or commercialised".
The president of the NZ Association of Scientists, Dr Mike Berridge, says the result may be "very large redundancies in the crown research institute system".
It is not easy to get the balance right. Clearly New Zealand is both small and poorer than 21 other countries that can better afford to pursue knowledge widely, regardless of economic benefits.
On the other hand, we are still richer than 140 other countries, and perhaps can afford to finance some research whose results we can give away free to the world.
Dr Berridge says Forst has become "too strongly focused on economic outcomes because that's what Treasury and the Government financial people want".
"Unfortunately in doing that, you stand a chance of destroying some of the science base within this country, and particularly getting rid of some of the best scientists."
Centres of Research Excellence
The 45 applicants for three to six positions are:
MEDICAL SCIENCES
Perinatal and Systems Biology (Auckland University): Premature births, small babies and brain/memory research.
Centre of Research Excellence in Cognitive Neuroscience (Auckland University): Brain functioning and injury, behavioural genetics and learning.
Centre for Studies in Behavioural Neurobiology (Victoria University, Wellington): Brain studies of addiction and other behaviours.
Medical Genomics Research Centre (Otago University, Christchurch, Dunedin and Auckland): Effects of genetic variation on susceptibility to diseases and treatment.
Centre for Research on Brain Development (Otago University).
GENETICS, BIOLOGICAL AND FOOD SCIENCES
Centre for Molecular Biodiscovery (Auckland University): New medicines developed from studying the roles of various genes and proteins.
Centre for Plant Structural and Functional Genomics (Massey and Otago Universities and Mt Albert Research Centre, based in Palmerston North): Genetic structure of NZ food plants and other commercially valuable plants.
Molecular and Biochemical Parasitology (Massey University, AgResearch and Landcare, Palmerston North): Genetic engineering of insects and body worms to control pests.
The Riddet Centre (Massey University, Palmerston North): Food technology.
NZ Genes, Enzymes and Microbes Biotechnology Centre of Research Excellence (Waikato University): Finding active proteins (enzymes) in bacteria etc, and engineering "better" enzymes.
Centre for Advanced Animal Health (Otago University): Vaccines and other animal medicines.
ECOLOGY, BIODIVERSITY AND ECOSYSTEMS
Pacific BioCare - Centre for Research on Pacific Biosecurity and Biodiversity (Auckland University and Landcare, Auckland): Monitoring the spread of plants and animals.
National Centre of Excellence in Marine Science (Auckland and Canterbury Universities and Niwa, Auckland).
NZ Biodiversity and Bioresources Centre of Research Excellence (Waikato University): Recording NZ's biological resources, their possible uses, and ways to protect and enhance them.
Allan Wilson Centre for Molecular Ecology and Evolution (Massey University, Palmerston North): Genetic structure of NZ plants, animals and microbes.
Centre for Sustainable Rural Ecosystems and Communities (Massey University, Palmerston North): Regional resource use planning.
Centre for Advanced Bio-Protection Technologies (Lincoln University): Biological alternatives to chemical pesticides.
Sustainable Ecosystems (Otago University): Managing impact on nature of human activities, eg, farming, tourism.
PHYSICAL AND EARTH SCIENCES, ENGINEERING AND MATHEMATICS
Centre for Advanced Automation, Robotics and Mechatronic Systems (Auckland, Massey, Waikato and Canterbury Universities and Industrial Research Ltd, based at Massey's Albany campus).
NZ Institute of Mathematics and its Applications (Auckland University): Maths and its uses in physics, engineering, medicine etc.
Centre of Excellence for Advanced Materials (Auckland and Waikato Universities): New materials.
Research Centre for Information and Communications Technology Innovation (Waikato and Auckland Universities and AUT, based at Waikato): A national network for ICT researchers.
Information Science and Technology Research Centre (Massey University): Large-scale information systems and their uses in science, business and distance learning.
MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology (Victoria and Canterbury Universities, based in Wellington): New materials including nano (minuscule) materials, superconductors, fuel cells and batteries.
NZ Centre for Earth Processes (Victoria University, Wellington): Earth processes, eg, continental plates,earthquakes and climate change.
Centre of Research Excellence in Astrophysics and Imaging Technology (Canterbury, Auckland and Victoria Universities and Industrial Research Ltd, based at Canterbury): Origins of stars, optics, instrument making.
Gateway Antarctica (Canterbury University): Antarctic research.
Centre for Information Technology Research (IT departments at 23 polytechs, based at Otago Polytechnic): IT for small and medium businesses.
Centre of Research Excellence in Distributed Interactive Systems (Otago and Auckland Universities and AUT, based at Otago): Human-computer interface.
ECONOMICS, COMMERCE AND POLICY STUDIES
Collaborative Centre for Property and Construction Innovation (Seven NZ and three overseas institutions based at Unitec, Auckland): Building technology and management.
NZ Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship Research (Unitec, Auckland): How the entrepreneurial process operates.
NZ Centre for Enterprise and Entrepreneurship (Massey University): Entrepreneurial activity and growth in NZ.
NZ Centre for Applied Business Research (Victoria University): Competitive strategy, internationalisation, leadership, employment relations, innovation, entrepreneurship.
Hazard and Disaster Management Research Centre (Five universities and Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences, based at Canterbury University).
NZ Communication Research Centre (Christchurch Polytechnic): Media studies.
EDUCATION AND SOCIAL SCIENCES
Nga Pae o te Maramatanga (Horizons of Insight) (Auckland University): Maori development.
The History Network (Auckland and Otago Universities and others, Auckland based): NZ history.
Centre of Research Excellence in Educational Research (Auckland University).
Centre for Research on Economic and Social Transformations (Crest) (Various universities, based at Waikato University): Maori development; environmental sustainability; political behaviour and governance; demographic, economic, social change.
Te Runanga Rangahau o Te Whare Wananga o Waikato (Waikato University): Maori studies.
Centre for Whanau and Family Policy (Massey University): Social and economic place of New Zealanders, especially youth and elderly.
Effective Education for the Knowledge Society (Massey University): Improving education.
Te Kakano - Marae-based Studies (Te Wananga o Raukawa, Otaki).
Te Toi Pukenga o Aotearoa - Centre for NZ Studies (Victoria University, Wellington): Cultural changes and NZ cultural identities.
NZ Public Health Research Institute (Otago University Clinical School, Wellington): NZ health status, inequalities and the health system.
Read the full reports:
Government of New Zealand
Growing an innovative New Zealand
Part 2
Herald features
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