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Higher education providers are fiddling the numbers in a bid to win more research funding, says an international expert hired to independently review the system.
In a report for the Tertiary Education Commission, released yesterday, Dr Jonathan Adams wrote that there was "some wilful game-playing" when tertiary staff were put forward for ranking under the Performance Base Research Fund (PBRF) system.
The rankings - in which the University of Otago overtook the University of Auckland in the last round - are used in the allocation of about $230 million a year in research funding.
"Institutions are quite clearly playing games with contractual definitions in order to alter the numbers being included," wrote Dr Adams, of the British-based company Evidence Ltd.
One deputy vice-chancellor quoted anonymously in the report said: "The design assumed honesty. Wilful misuse surprised some people."
Auckland University vice-chancellor Stuart McCutcheon told the Weekend Herald when updated rankings were released last year that Auckland had a third of the country's "A" ranked - or "world-class" - researchers, more than any other institution, and it was hard to know why it had slipped a place since the 2003 round.
But he said it seemed other tertiary education providers had understated the number of lowly ranked "R" - or "research inactive" - staff.
Dr Adams suggested moving away from the "general eligibility" model and instead focusing on a core group of permanent academic staff around whom the research system pivots.
Tertiary Education Commission spokesman Andrew Bristol said a sector reference group of government and sector representatives would consider the report.
"As this report says, the PBRF is achieving good things for New Zealand and New Zealand's tertiary education sector," he said.
Dr Adams found the PBRF was effective and delivering important and appropriate results.
New Zealand's small research community had an incredibly high level of achievement and its wider population was characterised by a "can-do" culture.
But it was disappointing that Budget announcements indicated the Government was doing little more than increasing the size of the PBRF to match inflation over the next four years. "The PBRF fund may not grow sufficiently to drive the outcomes that policy expects."
The president of the Association of University Staff, Associate Professor Maureen Montgomery, said: "We are particularly pleased to note that issues such as the reporting of individual scores and the use of PBRF grades in performance appraisals are considered in the report."
