Students mount a protest outside the Albany campus of Massey University, which last week decided to cut more than 60 positions at its College of Sciences. Scientists fear the turmoil seen across universities will have long-lasting impacts. Photo / Niklas Polzer
Massive job losses and financial turmoil in our universities are threatening the future of science in New Zealand. Science reporter Jamie Morton explains why that’s becoming a problem for all of us.
Next year will mark Professor Dianne Brunton’s 20th at Massey University - and her last.
The prominent ecologist’s research on our taonga species has been cited thousands of times and you’ll find many of her former understudies today working at the front lines of conservation.
But a decision last week means that her role, and more than 60 others in the cash-strapped university’s restructuring College of Sciences, will soon no longer exist.
Some colleagues have been left feeling “disposable” while others have vowed never to return to academia.
Brunton, however, is determined to keep doing research that supports conservation and students.
“But it will have to take a different form and, if I am lucky, have a different home.”
For her college’s credibility, she fears the damage wrought by the cuts will be irreparable.
“I’m really proud of my students: they’ve done amazing things and all of that is still there... it’s just that the future potential is gone.”
By the end of this year alone, hundreds of jobs are likely to have vanished at our universities, amid seemingly endless financial turmoil.
The impact on our small research sector, scientists tell the Herald, will reverberate for years and decades to come.
In many cases, the ripples have spread further than New Zealand.
Take the global implications of a decision by Auckland University of Technology to shutter our only radio observatory last year, around the time it launched a massive cost-saving drive.
When international scientists alerted Government officials to the fact this could disrupt critical global networks which support GPS, a messy scramble followed.
A new operator was eventually found, but other pieces of our science infrastructure in universities haven’t escaped the axe.
The 2021 closure of Waikato University’s stable isotope unit marked the end of decades of valuable work on everything from river and soil pollution to the ever-changing habitats of our native species and fisheries.
The Waikato Radiocarbon Dating Laboratory escaped being scrapped with it, but not without disruption to globally important research.
In Dunedin, we’re also about to lose one of New Zealand’s few human parasitology research labs.
News of the Otago University facility’s impending closure happened to come just as Queenstown’s water supply was hit with a cryptosporidium outbreak.
In an October letter, Parliament’s environment commissioner Simon Upton bluntly told the then minister Ayesha Verrall how it could leave New Zealand more exposed to such disasters.
Upton saw it as “symptomatic” of a failure to link research investment to areas of critical national vulnerability - yet Verrall needn’t have been reminded.
It was after all she who, as an Otago University epidemiologist back in those dramatic first weeks of 2020, dived into the frantic catch-up effort to ready New Zealand’s contact tracing systems.
Professor Michael Plank happened to find himself in a similar situation.
The University of Canterbury mathematician was among a small team that raced to turn out a pandemic model that should’ve been built into our health capability years earlier.
“In the first few months I think we were running mainly on adrenalin, and that period was always going to be hectic and stressful no matter how well prepared we were,” Plank says.
“But as time passed, there was a sense of frustration that the work had to be cobbled together on the fly, and there was no job security for the students and early career researchers who were a vital part of the team.”
Added to the irony was the fact one of our top infectious disease modellers, Professor Mick Roberts, spent the dawn of the pandemic distracted over the possibility of losing his own job at Massey.
Professor Troy Baisden has had to watch much of this slashing and burning play out during his tenure as co-president of the New Zealand Association of Scientists.
It will all have been painfully familiar.
Baisden left his own job at Waikato University two years ago, despite having held a prominent role focused on the health of the Bay of Plenty’s lakes and rivers with active grants.
“I’ve heard a lot of people with good CVs are leaving New Zealand; others are retiring or doing less,” Baisden said.
Even before the carnage of 2023, a Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment-commissioned snapshot of the research workforce showed a third didn’t feel valued by their organisations, with a similar proportion dissatisfied over their work-life balance.
“Ten or 12 years ago, I was recruiting the best in the world. Would they come here now? I don’t think so,” Baisden said.
“When you look at both salary and resources, I can’t understand why we seem to be aiming for the bottom.”
If you’re wondering why university scientists losing their jobs matters to you, consider some of the questions they are helping to answer for New Zealand.
How can we reduce our dependence on oil, gas and coal to stop global warming, design smarter cancer drugs or better prepare for the next giant earthquake?
How do we fight antibiotic resistance? Can we really win the war on pests or clean up our waterways?
Our eight universities carry out more than half the country’s basic research, while employing about two thirds of those actively publishing.
Yet funding for research has hardly budged in years, with the cost of inflation outstripping what extra money has come in from government.
“If income had increased in line with costs, we wouldn’t have a problem,” Universities New Zealand chief executive Chris Whelan said.
Universities are still hurting from three years of lost revenue from absent international students - it’ll likely take another four years for numbers to recover - but the pandemic’s impacts were merely a breaking point.
In real terms, Whelan said, funding per domestic student has fallen by around 16 per cent over the past decade, while costs have risen at a rate generally exceeding CPI.
That our tertiary sector had been knocked so hard showed there was little resilience in the system, said Professor Travis Glare, of Lincoln University’s Research Management Office.
“Budgets are barely balanced in any year, so no reserves are available for these bad years,” Glare said.
“The only variables seem to be staff, so redundancies happen.”
While commercialisation brings in around half the billion dollars that universities spend on research each year, public investment is critical, with the Government controlling nearly 80 per cent of all funding.
That came with per-student tuition subsidies, limits on tuition fee increases and the Performance Based Research Fund (PBRF).
But a lack of increased funding has meant universities now invest around a quarter less than in 2018 on basic research and developing the workforce.
Professor Nicola Gaston, a prominent physicist and science commentator, said it wasn’t helpful funding structures were also creating “perverse incentives” for supporting research.
“The standard academic contract says that a third of the person’s time is to be used for research; only a minority of academics have direct funding to actually do the expected research, via our grants system,” she said.
“This is a problem.”
For smaller institutions and disciplines, year-on-year fluctuations in student numbers open budget holes that were sometimes unforeseeable - or at least not enough in advance to make constructive or strategic changes.
Even after an emergency $128m cash injection this year, Whelan said universities were still under “enormous” financial strain - as reflected by the drastic steps being taken now.
“However, if costs keep rising faster than income, universities will have to continue to look at where they can find cost savings - and the largest costs for universities are staff.”
He cited a handful of direct measures that could help ease pressure, like adjusting contestable research funding to inflation, increasing the PBRF, and putting a new, independent funding agency in charge of allocation.
The sector’s funding squeeze wasn’t just limited to our tertiary sector.
In all, our spending on research and development amounts to less than 1.5 per cent of GDP, compared with a 2.5 per cent average among OECD nations.
A long-touted 2 per cent target still appeared well out of reach - and Baisden said the only component of spending that had increased had been the R&D tax incentive for businesses.
“Unlike the grants that preceded it, we have no idea what that spending is doing.”
For what relatively little public money goes into the science sector, there were a surprising number of pots.
Our seven Crown Research Institutes (CRIs), home to around 2000 researchers, all draw from the MBIE-run Strategic Science Investment Fund.
Several hundred million dollars are set aside each year for the Endeavour, Health Research and Marsden funds, but the bulk of applicants fail to land grants.
“The fact that major investment funds average between 10 to 15 per cent success rates is an enormous, wasted effort in bid writing, that is not contributing in any way to productivity,” Glare said.
“Many university people can no longer see the point of trying to apply for external funding they are unlikely to get, which if they do, just means more work and no increase in pay.”
For all of that, Glare still thought New Zealand had a better science system than it perhaps deserved, and still punched above its weight internationally.
“So, people are attracted to our country, especially for the biological sciences, as we are a first-world, plant-based economy, which is unusual.”
If young seismologist Dr Finn Illsley-Kemp needed a symbolic reminder of unproductive competition in his sector, it came the day Victoria University announced a proposal to eliminate hundreds of jobs.
That morning, he noticed a giant billboard outside Victoria’s Pipitea campus - advertising the University of Canterbury.
With several geosciences courses in his own world-renowned department coming under review, it’s been a long, stressful few months for his colleagues, at a time when science focused on our natural hazards has never been more important.
For early-career researchers such as himself who didn’t hold permanent positions, the upheaval has only deepened his sense of precarity.
“It feels even more unlikely that there will be opportunities for us in the future,” said Illsley-Kemp, whose own work explores the links between eruptions and earthquakes.
“This means we have to rely on being successful with highly competitive research grants to just get another contract extension.”
Ultimately, it could drive our best young talent offshore.
“There are many scientists like me who love this country and want to stay and contribute, but we need to see that there is a future,” Illsley-Kemp said.
Early-career researchers have long been the workhorses of our science system, often working more than 40-hour weeks on years-long PhD projects.
But getting a fulltime position was never a guarantee, and poor pay - the average PhD scholarship in 2019 amounted to less than minimum wage - meant many were having to work side-jobs.
Dr Ritodhi Chakraborty, who co-chairs Royal Society Te Apārangi’s Early Career Researcher Forum, said some, especially in universities, were worried about employment prospects and not being able to “break through the glass ceiling” of research funding.
“But they are also pleased to see questions around work-life balance, representation and personal well-being come to the forefront,” Chakraborty said.
The Government has moved to address these issues with several new initiatives, including increases in early-career fellowships.
Yet the fresh funding for fellowships amounted to just half of what would be needed to get the system back to where it was more than a decade ago, Baisden said.
“Kiwis who haven’t acquired permanent roles with clear funding streams are effectively competing in a system that prefers to support new underpaid PhD students, rather than build [the] careers [of] those... freshly minted PhD graduates.”
When nearly 1500 researchers were surveyed last year, more than 80 per cent saw a lack of government support as the biggest challenge facing their sector.
Like Illsley-Kemp, they wanted less competition for research dollars.
Successive governments have repeatedly tried to build more cohesion into the system, be it through university-based Centres of Research Excellence, or the 11 National Science Challenges, now winding down after a decade and some $1.6b in funding.
The vision for the challenges was simple: bring together our scientists and steer them toward a hit list of moonshot goals, like tackling water quality and the biodiversity crisis.
Scientists who spoke to the Herald had mixed views on their legacy, with Baisden describing them as both worthwhile and “a missed opportunity”.
“Some pieces of research were outstanding and impactful, and likely wouldn’t have happened through purely contestable or previous funding mechanisms.”
Yet, if funding for climate change research hadn’t been so fragmented and uneven, he said, New Zealand might today be better prepared for worsening threats like sea level rise and powerful storms.
Even Professor Sir Peter Gluckman, who championed the challenges while serving as the Prime Minister’s chief science adviser, looks back with some frustration.
Government changes to their funding structure made them a “battlefield of competition”, Gluckman said, with core money taken from CRIs and given to the challenges to administer.
“So, you’ve completely changed the landscape in ways that over-managed it, and made it even more strange, because the people managing these funds did not necessarily have the overall strategy for New Zealand in mind.”
The challenges were to have been succeeded by a fresh set of research priorities, amid an MBIE-driven reform programme dubbed Te Ara Paerangi-Future Pathways.
Gluckman turned in a 22-page submission on what he thought the revamp, touted as the sector’s biggest makeover in three decades, should involve.
That included setting up a single council for research administration and merging the seven CRIs.
Science New Zealand chief executive Anthony Scott said that when it came to centralising back-office services, CRIs had already been sharing knowledge and resources “where it makes sense to do so to improve our effectiveness as well as efficiency”.
Gluckman also wanted to see science given its own ministry again - something he said could also help link up science policy with higher education.
“All said and done, MBIE is a giant, cumbersome beast reporting to too many ministers, and frankly, science and innovation doesn’t get to be at the top of the agenda very easily.”
Gluckman, now serving as the International Science Council’s president, noted other small, advanced economies like Ireland, Denmark and Singapore - which New Zealand largely trailed in high-quality academic output - had more integrated science systems.
In any case, he said New Zealand couldn’t continue as a low public funder of research.
“We have failed to understand that R&D is an investment, not a cost.”
Gaston, who co-heads the Victoria University-based MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology, felt her sector also needed to share that message with Kiwis.
“We need to be smarter about explaining the value of R&D and subsequent economic development to all New Zealanders, to really work on the social licence we need for what we do,” she said.
And while grand, flashy projects like the challenges did help tidily show where research funding was targeted, Gaston questioned whether a simpler approach might be needed for the next reset.
“They should put the money into the system through tried and tested, existing mechanisms, and simply dial up the amounts in order to ensure that new people and new research areas are being funded,” she said.
“That is what will make a difference.”
Just as the science sector’s been contorting and contracting, it’s also struggled to close long-standing equity gaps.
About half of surveyed scientists felt there still weren’t enough women in top roles, while three quarters agreed Māori and Pacific people remained under-represented in research.
While the picture was slowly changing, with more tenured female associate professors and professors coming up through university ranks, women still represented just a third of senior leaders in the Stem (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) workforce, in both business and academia.
One recent study estimated that, on average, female university academics earned around $400,000 less than men over a lifetime, while another concluded women would keep facing inequity for decades without bold action.
Whelan acknowledged universities still had quite some distance to go to achieve full parity, “but we are making progress”.
Structural problems also endured for our gender-diverse scientists - and also our Māori or Pasifika academics.
Between 2008 and 2018, for instance, Māori accounted for fewer than 5 per cent of roles in science faculties at our universities, one of which hadn’t employed a single person over the period.
Victoria University researcher Dr Tara McAllister suspected little has changed, owing to a legacy of Māori being directed away from science in all stages of our mainstream educational system.
She pointed to the many barriers facing aspiring Māori scientists, from poverty, to a funding system she said still treated Māori “tokenistically”.
“If we think about research as a sector as a whole and who it was made for, then perhaps the system is functioning just as it was created to.”
Again, there have been attempts at meaningful change.
The former Government’s planned sector reforms singled out embedding Te Tiriti o Waitangi principles as a focus, while MBIE has launched new targeted funds and tried to incorporate its Vision Mātauranga policy across priority investment areas.
“My hope is that we can move beyond simply wanting to include more Māori in our system, and instead see some significant shifts in power so that iwi, hapū and whānau can be leading their own rangahau [research],” McAllister said.
“I want to see more kaupapa Māori research funded, more research for Māori, by Māori, I don’t want to see more Pākehā and tauiwi researchers doing ‘Māori-themed’ or ‘Māori-flavoured research’.”
Dr Sereana Naepi has similarly explored the enduring inequity facing Māori and Pacific people in academia.
“The science sector has an incredible amount of data available that means we could pinpoint exactly where resourcing is needed to make the most impact,” the University of Auckland sociologist said.
“Equity cannot be a political conversation - we either want to all benefit from an inclusive sector that is enriched through diverse ideas, or we want to lose out as a society.”
At Massey, James Roberts was now facing the loss of his supervisors, support technicians and a purpose-built facility where he studies our endemic katipō spider.
“The cuts have been extremely disruptive,” the young Masters degree student said.
“I’ve had to invest a significant amount of time trying to determine what will happen to both me and my degree, when I should have been dedicating that time to my research.
“On a personal level, it’s certainly led to increased anxiety and many sleepless nights.”
What just happened to his department showed the Government needed to look at what money it was giving science - and how decisions were being made in our universities.
MBIE declined to comment for this article, while the Tertiary Education Commission’s chief executive Tim Fowler told the Herald the commission was looking for growth in Stem enrolments next year.
Judith Collins acknowledged the situation facing researchers like Roberts was tragic.
Having become Research, Science and Innovation Minister weeks ago, it was too early for her to say precisely what her Government would do about the sector’s ongoing issues, all of which she was well aware of.
“We do need to get focused on what is achievable. And at the same time, how can we all understand that there is X amount of money, and that that money needs to be focused on the better outcomes for the country, including commercialisation,” Collins said.
She didn’t support the Te Ara Paerangi reforms, nor did she back a budgeted half-billion dollar spend on making Wellington a science hub, but was more favourable toward setting new research priorities and expected to receive a report on progress toward them this week.
Collins acknowledged unproductive competition in the system was a problem.
“I absolutely agree with the fact that we have different CRIs doing similar jobs and seeking funding for very similar things, without the necessary levels of co-operation that we’d expect,” she said.
“That is just no longer working for country with a population of five million.”
Would the Government be investing more in science?
“That’s an issue obviously for Budget consideration,” Collins said.
“But my main thought on that, given we’ve inherited a financial crisis, is what we must do now is look for where we can lessen wastage in the system, and put [investment toward] real research.”
For his part, Glare wasn’t optimistic a change in the Beehive would fix science’s problems - if only because governments have been tinkering for 30 years “and just made it worse”.
“No one believes the system is fit for purpose and sustainable,” he said of his fellow scientists.
“But most just keep trying.”
Jamie Morton is a specialist in science and environmental reporting. He joined the Herald in 2011 and writes about everything from conservation and climate change to natural hazards and new technology.
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