Australia seeks research students

Australia is stepping up its efforts to recruit research students and fellows to work in major projects, including research centres and educational institutions.

Deputy prime minister and education, employment and workplace relations minister Julia Gillard said the recruitment strategy specified that the county was in need of “the  best and the brightest university-age students” from overseas.

An Australian Higher Education survey quoted her as saying that research scholars would help build Australia’s future research capability and academic workforce.

Education experts were speculating in Sydney and Melbourne (which account for the best universities and research centres across the Tasman) that Australia was competing with US universities in shoring up the US’s technological edge.

The overseas student industry supported 80,000 Australian jobs and, as the country’s biggest service export sector, pumped $A14.2 billion into the economy in 2007-2008.

Ms Gillard said enrolments by overseas students in Australian institutions increased by a record 20.7% in 2008 to reach 543,898, the largest increase since 2002.

The Group of Eight (a lobby group for the nation’s oldest tertiary education institutions) urged the Australian government to invest in high-quality research to revive the flagging economy.

The group’s executive director Michael Gallagher stressed the need to pursue policy settings designed to improve equity and excellence, in line with the recent Bradley Review of Australian Higher Education.

“If Australia is to be seriously world competitive, there can be no trade-off between equity and excellence. Enlarging tertiary participation by flattening the university sector is not a wise option,” he said in a press release.

The Australian education sector is awash with comments and commentaries on the Bradley Review of the tertiary education sector released in November 2008.

Professor Denise Bradley, former Sydney University vice-chancellor, had said in his review that Australia should have in place a student-demand-driven model.

The model should free universities to pursue any “type of students they wanted” but required them to compete against each other and plan their own destiny.

The government should make agreements with individual universities to ensure, for example, that universities were offering courses that were not just in high demand from students but were also in line with the needs of the economy.

The changes pointed to a system in which universities, tertiary institutions and private providers expanding and competing for government-funded undergraduate places.

On a related note, innovation, industry, science and research minister Kim Carr reportedly criticised universities as “the poorest research collaborators in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development” (OECD), and slated business for being stuck at an innovation level comparable to that of the US more than 20 years ago.

“Lack of collaboration between business and industry on which new jobs and economic opportunities depended was “one of the great weaknesses” of the innovation system.

“Collaboration between Australian businesses, universities and publicly funded research agencies should double over the next decade,” he said.

The government wanted 25% increase in business innovation during the next decade.

Mr Carr said that in fully funding research overheads, the government would require universities to accurately measure their costs and meet performance targets.