Academics slam grading scheme

By SIMON COLLINS, science reporter

University researchers have hit back at a new funding system that grades them from A to C on the basis of their research publications and evidence of "peer esteem".

The new performance-based research fund will give more money to universities, and in theory to polytechnics, which have large numbers of "A-grade" researchers.

But Victoria University Vice-Chancellor Stuart McCutcheon told the Australasian Research Management Society conference in Auckland yesterday that the new system was demoralising staff and eating up all the extra money in bureaucracy.

"It will consign a good many researchers to the 'research-inactive' grade, not because they are poor performers but because they are new to the research community," he said.

"What we have done is take $5 to $6 million of research top-ups from the polytechnics and spend them on overheads.

"My view is that, in a situation in which we are strongly competitive internationally, we shouldn't waste anything. We should spend every dollar that we can on frontline researchers."

The new fund, to be phased in between next year and 2007, will eventually allocate $160 million a year to tertiary institutions on the basis of their research performance.

Each of the country's 5770 academics judged to be "research-active" has had to file a return stating the top four research "outputs" that they are most proud of in the past six years, up to 50 other research outputs in that period, other contributions to research, such as serving on editorial boards of academic journals, and evidence of "peer esteem", such as being quoted in other academic papers.

The Tertiary Education Commission has appointed 165 experts - a quarter of them from overseas - to grade each academic from A to C or as "research-inactive".

Fund manager Roger Staples said the exercise was costing $3 million for the first year, then "bugger all" until the next review in 2006. After that, reviews would be only every six years.

The co-president of the Waikato University branch of the Association of University Staff (AUS), Dr Chris Knowles, said she was graded "C" because she had only recently transferred to the academic staff in the Waikato Innovation Centre for Electronic Education.

"I don't object to that," she said. "But the contribution that people make to an area is not always measured by publishable outputs."

Unitec economics lecturer Keith Rankin, also ranked "C", said he had not had a chance to publish much in the past six years because of a heavy teaching workload.

"The only way you can know whether something [research] is important is to look back after 20 years and see whether people have used it."

Massey University education lecturer John O'Neill said he had not been told his grading, yet the university had announced that it would give the final gradings to academic departments "so that they can be used in the same way as teaching evaluations" to assess staff performance.

However, Auckland University AUS branch president Tim Hazledine said Auckland administrators had undertaken not to use the new gradings in decisions on appointments and promotions.

Polytechnics have asked to opt out of the new fund and have put a proposal to the Government for an alternative system for them.