It’s time to start dividing research funds differently and more fairly, so that academics don’t have to fight each other anymore, says columnist Dirk-Jan Scheffers.
Just before the Christmas break, UKrant published an article on the ‘battle’ for research grants. Several faculties decided that, due to the announced budget cuts and other financial doom scenarios, they would have to land more research funding in order to stay in the black.
But, says Mark Kas, funding officer at the Faculty of Science and Engineering (FSE), every single other university in the country has come up with the same plan. The Dutch Research Council’s (NWO) budget is shrinking and other large funding organisations not on the Ministry of Education’s budget, such as the National Growth Fund are being ‘phased out’, which means it’s almost inevitable that, in spite of their extra efforts, no one will be able to get extra funding.
Education will also be catastrophically affected by less funding for research. People tend to forget that a lot of research funding directly leads to more teaching capacity. Most of the external funds are used to hire PhD candidates.
These PhDs spend 10 percent of their time teaching; they lead seminars, support the practical classes, and are often in charge of daily support for students doing their final graduation projects.
Education will also be catastrophically affected by less funding for research
At FSE, external financing makes up approximately 40 percent of the budget, which translates to 565 employed PhD candidates. That amounts to fifty-six full-time teaching positions. Across the university, PhD candidates do the work of 196 full-time lecturers.
It’s curious, to say the least, that such a large part of a university’s teaching capacity depends on its academics’ ability to obtain research funding. Less funding for research, therefore, will also affect the quality of education.
In other words, we can no longer afford to participate in the ‘battle’ for research funding. Unless…
A year ago, I wrote in my column that a pooping ox would probably be better at dividing research funds than an entire committee of experts.
The acclaimed Young Academy also published a research report on participation in academic policies. A large group of academics from various fields, ranging from PhD to professor, was asked to distribute a budget across various kinds of financing. They would get immediate insight into the consequences of their decisions.
We can no longer afford to participate in the ‘battle’ for research funding
The experiment showed the academics had a strong preference for non-competitive, stable financing, even the ones who had regularly and successfully applied for funds. No one is in favour of thematic research or ‘team grants’ – which currently get the most funding. On top of that, half (to be fair: 49 percent) of the people participating in the experiment said the current competition is unfair, and 70 percent said that applying for subsidies is like playing the lottery.
While the competitions had once been designed to ensure extra money went to excellent academics, it’s now almost impossible to do science without funding begotten from competition. One advantage of the competition is that it forces people to be extra diligent when writing research plans and making sure they’re well-formulated. But people don’t need to be competitive to do that.
Now that it looks like we’ll all be working so much harder, perhaps it’s a good idea to see if we can divide the remaining research funds more simply and fairly. That would be so much better that ‘battling’ you colleagues, which is time-consuming, stressful, and expensive.
DIRK-JAN SCHEFFERS