Auckland tops class in first uni rankings

By SIMON COLLINS

Auckland University stands to gain up to $10 million a year in research money from a scheme it is trying to stop the Government publishing in full.

The university is believed to have won top place in the new performance-based research fund rankings, which will allocate $18 million to universities this year on the basis of their research quality.

Canterbury University is believed to be second, Victoria third, Otago fourth, and Waikato, Massey and Lincoln in an unknown order after that.

Auckland University of Technology (AUT), the country's newest university, is believed to have come bottom of the eight universities, although ahead of polytechnics and wananga.

Publication of the results has been held up by an injunction bid lodged by Auckland and Victoria Universities in the High Court on Tuesday objecting to an appendix which compares the New Zealand results with British universities.

Lawyers for the two universities and the Tertiary Education Commission have been called to a judicial conference in the High Court at Auckland at 1pm today.

Auckland is believed to compare well against most British universities, coming in just below the elite "Russell Group" which includes Oxford, Cambridge and London universities.

But the universities believe even this result may deter overseas students from coming to New Zealand universities if most of them rank well behind top British universities.

The performance-based fund will allocate only 10 per cent of the universities' $180 million state research grants this year.

The other $162 million will be allocated on the numbers of students in degree and postgraduate courses.

But the new system will allocate 20 per cent of the money next year, half of it in 2006 and all of it in 2007.

Auckland, with 24 per cent of the fulltime student numbers in 2002, could gain up to $10 million extra a year by the end of the process, up from around $45 million.

However, it is understood that no institution has gained or lost more than $1 million in the first year.

AUT's incoming vice-chancellor, Professor Derek McCormack, accepted that his university would receive less than the $4 million to $6 million it receives now.

"We might be in the lower reaches of the university lists because we are a new university," he said.

"But we are comfortable with that. We are on a steep research development track.

"We have some very good areas of research, but we acknowledge that the more established universities are going to be doing better than us."

The Tertiary Education Commission yesterday recalled computer disks containing results of the new system, which had been sent to 22 institutions on Monday.

It had planned to give them the password to unlock the encrypted disks on Wednesday.

The planned public release of the results on Tuesday is now in doubt.

Auckland University vice-chancellor Dr John Hood said Auckland had supported the new system from the beginning, and objected only to the appendix comparing the New Zealand results with Britain - the only other country that has published results from a similar exercise.

Dr Hood, who will take over as vice-chancellor of Oxford, Britain's oldest university, late this year, said the British system rated university departments based only on academics put forward for assessment by each department.

The proportion of staff assessed ranged from less than 15 per cent in some colleges of higher education up to 95 per cent at Oxford.

The New Zealand system assesses all 5770 academics in 22 institutions.

It assesses each academic's best four published papers in the past six years as well as the total publications, fellowships and prizes of each and his or her "contribution to the research environment" by activities such as serving on assessment panels.

Those factors contribute 60 per cent of an institution's overall grade. Another 25 per cent is based on the number of postgraduate degrees completed, and 15 per cent on external research income.

"They are very, very different processes," Dr Hood said.

But commission chairman Dr Andrew West said the agency had made allowances for the differences, such as the different ways "research-inactive" staff were counted in the two systems.

He said the commission knew the British system well and had used it as a model in designing the New Zealand system.

But it had made changes based on what it had learned from the British experience.

"We are opposing the injunction," he said.

"The two universities appear to want to run the arguments in the media. We are going to follow due process and run through this in the court."

The top eight

* Auckland

* Canterbury

* Victoria

* Otago

* Waikato, Massey, Lincoln

* AUT