National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU)

Name (Individual/Organisation)

National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU)

Responses

Q10. Having regard to the Review’s Terms of Reference, the ARC Act itself, the function, structure and operation of the ARC, and the current and potential role of the ARC in fostering excellent Australian research of global significance, do you have any other comments or suggestions?

Q1 – SCOPE AND PURPOSE OF THE ARC

The ARC is a critical component of Australia’s research sector, providing pivotal funding for research opportunities that would otherwise be missed. As a key funding body, it is vital that guiding principles are in place to ensure that the ARC has a positive impact on all facets of research including the job security and career development of our researchers.

JOB SECURITY AS AN OBJECT OF THE ACT

The widespread use of insecure forms of employment in research is currently the biggest issue facing the research workforce. While the ARC does not directly employ researchers, the use of a discrete grant-based model for research rather than a block funding model is a major cause of the problem – with universities and research institutes responding to short term funding with short term employment for durations less than or at best equal to each grant period.

The entrenchment of this practice has made research one of the most precarious industries for workers in Australia, contributing to the flight of Australia’s research talent to countries and sectors with better conditions of work. This is a huge loss to the Australian community given the significant investments made in educating and training each of our expert researchers.

The Department of Education does not publish data on the job security of Australian researchers. NTEU has conducted two surveys to fill the gap in knowledge on the working lives of researchers. Our 2019 survey found that only around 1 in 4 researchers were employed on a continuing basis (excluding casuals), with the rest being employed on fixed term contracts. Our results also showed that women were less likely to have continuing employment than men.

A third of respondents to our 2019 survey had been on rolling fixed term contracts for more than 6 years and two thirds of respondents said the length of their current contract was two years or less, placing the average contract length between one and two years. This is consistent with our most recent survey (November 2022) which showed that 80% of contracts were under 3 years in length.

This translates to an extremely precarious working environment for researchers.

Unsurprisingly, only 2% of fixed term researchers reported that they were happy with their current arrangements, with 85% preferring continuing employment. Around 1 in 5 researchers said that ongoing job insecurity had created stress and negatively impacted their health.

The ARC, as the originator of research funds does have capacity to contribute to improvements in the working lives of Australian researchers, as such, NTEU would like to see job security for researchers become an explicit object of the Act (as per the recent amendments to the Fair Work Act).

Codifying job security for Australian researchers as an object of the Act will ensure security of employment is considered throughout all grant making and program design processes.

Recommendation: The government make job security for researchers an object of the ARC Act
(Specific solutions are discussed under Q7 Process Improvements.)

GENDER EQUITY

In the recent round of grants only 1 in 3 were awarded to women (with the main issue being fewer women overall applying). When we asked researchers in November 2022 if they believed they had the same chance at success in an ARC application as someone of the same experience and level as them only 15% of women agreed (and 21% of men).

When asked which factors they felt most reduced their chances of grant application success, 49% of women selected “my sex or gender” compared with only 9% of men who saw this as a barrier. This shows that women perceive a strong gender bias in ARC processes.

By making gender equity an object of the Act, gender would have to be considered in all facets of program design and grant approval. Such an amendment would also mirror the recent changes to the Fair Work Act.

Recommendation: That the government make gender equity an object of the Act

THE EXPLICIT MIX BETWEEN DISCOVERY AND LINKAGE

The greatest advancements in human knowledge come from basic blue skies research. The essential role of ARC in funding such research should be included in the Act via minimum funding allocations for the Discovery programs. It should be noted that over the past decade the relative funding share allocated to Discovery has been above 60% for almost the entire decade, with forward projections showing a move to a 60/40 split with Linkage.

Discovery grants are pivotal in that they not only support research that ‘builds’ new knowledge and encourages international collaboration, but the associated programs also provide vital support and training of new and emerging research talent. The NTEU notes that early career researchers are supported via the Discovery Early Career Researcher Award scheme, while mid-career researchers are assisted with their research projects via the Future Fellowship program. The Australian Laureate Fellowships scheme and the Discovery projects scheme also provide vital funding to support post-doctoral and/or postgraduate researchers, assisting with the development and training of the next generation of research talent. Finally, the Discovery Indigenous supports Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander researchers, driving First Nation’s knowledge creation and training new generations of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander researchers.

For these reasons, the NTEU advocates that the 65/35 split in funding (achieved in 2017-18) is the more appropriate funding split, noting that the Discovery programs not only drive knowledge creation (necessary for applied research activities) but also support post graduate research training, the development of early, midcareer and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander researchers, while supporting established researchers.

Recommendation: Restore Discovery funding to 65 percent of all grants, and codify this 65/35 split in the Act

Q2- GOVERNANCE AND MANAGEMENT

The ARC should be governed by people with direct experience in research, this includes people employed in research. NTEU supports the re-establishment of a board to strengthen accountability of the ARC and provide stronger oversight than the current advisory committee.

In addition to this, the NTEU recommends the establishment of an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander advisory committee. This committee would consist of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander researchers and advise on expanding ARC support for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander research and researchers.

Recommendation: Reintroduce the ARC Board to strengthen researcher oversight and accountability

Recommendation: Establish an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander advisory group to provide recommendations to the ARC board

Q3 – ACADEMIC EXPERTISE AND PEER REVIEW / Q4 - GRANT APPROVAL / Q5 - NATIONAL INTEREST TEST

Academic peer review is the foundation of the ARC’s neutrality and credibility. The College of Experts and multistage peer review process for assessing applications should be maintained.

In previous submissions, the NTEU has advocated for the adoption of the Haldane principle within Australia’s research policy framework. We note that this is also a recommendation of Science and Technology Australia to this review, and we agree that enshrining the Haldane principle of researcher led research in the Act will be a way to maintain credible neutrality without being overly prescriptive.

This is especially important given that recent ministerial vetos of approved grants have threatened the credible neutrality of the ARC. In addition to this government policy has become more prescriptive around research priorities – for example by pushing commercialisation and applied research over basic or fundamental research.

In our recent survey we asked researchers how fair and neutral their research council was. Surprisingly, this revealed a deep level of mistrust in both the ARC and the NHMRC’s internal processes.

This perception of bias in the process flowed through to individuals own ratings of their chances of grant success, with only a small number of researchers feeling they were able to apply on fair and equal footing with their peers.

Researchers attributed this feeling of disadvantage to several factors (see fig. 6) but especially to the ARC’s treatment of their discipline or research area. This view was particularly strong among humanities and social sciences researchers – suggesting the ARC has work to do in restoring its support for these areas.

One way of restoring trust in the ARC would be to focus the role of the minister in the grant approval process to approval of program scope and criteria, with the ARC tasked with assessing research applications and approving individual grants in accordance with the broader principles agreed with the Government. This would prevent instances of political intervention in individual projects recommended by the ARC (via its College of Experts) based on subjective interpretations of “national interest” or (worse still) “pub tests.”

Recommendation: Amend the Act to limit the minister’s veto power to instances where a grant has clearly been awarded outside of the program rules agreed to by the minister and the ARC.

NATIONAL INTEREST TEST

The outcome of the original National Interest Test was to reduce trust in the ARC process: researchers felt that their entire applications could be rejected based on a 150 word plain English summary. NTEU supports the changes to the NIT and its incorporation into the peer review process (as opposed to keeping the NIT as a separate hurdle for applicants).

A further improvement would come from renaming the National Interest Test the National Interest Statement, this would clarify its purpose as a statement to help communicate the research to the public rather than as a “test” per se.

Recommendation: Rename the National Interest Test the “National Interest Statement.”

RESEARCHER LED RESEARCH

One aspect of promoting academic expertise in research is promoting researcher driven research. In our recent survey 64% of respondents said they had felt pressure to change the focus of their research to match the ARC’s priorities, with many commenting they felt pressure to move to applied research, commercial research or “the latest fad” to be successful in securing funding from the ARC. Sources of pressure included the ARC process itself, peer reviewer comments, and the comments of university administrators and department colleagues.

Researchers commented that they felt their fields were out of favour. This feeling has in part come from governmental attempts to set the research agenda and promote certain disciplines over others. This trend has served to undermine the Haldane principle.

Recommendation: Review program criteria and how these are communicated to make sure it is clear that applications from all discipline areas can apply , and will receive equal and fair consideration

Q6 – ADMINISTRATIVE BURDEN

THE APPLICATION PROCESS

Recurring feedback NTEU has received from its members concerns the onerous nature of the ARC application process. Given the low success rate of applicants (1 in 5 on average, but 1 in 6 in many discipline areas) this creates a precarious risk-reward dynamic for researchers – in which they are gambling with their career.

Our survey data shows that the average time spent on each ARC application is around 338 hours per application, which translates to over 45 workdays (at 7.5 hours per day). This is nine weeks of full-time work. Given that the vast majority of these applications do not proceed this amounts to a huge opportunity-cost for Australia’s research effort.

Even for research-only staff currently working on externally funded projects this is a significant burden. Research grants generally do not resource time to apply for further funding. Not surprisingly, then, 77% of respondents in the same survey said they have had to forgo another research opportunity in order to apply for an ARC grant. Comments from researchers frequently stressed lost opportunities to publish journal articles and time to do practical research work.

For typical “40/40/20” teaching-research staff finding time to apply is extremely difficult because such activities are not properly accounted for in stretched or unrealistic workload models. Nevertheless, universities have made the acquisition of external research funding a mandatory pre-requisite for academic promotion, with dollar amounts won stipulated in “academic role statements” and similar performance benchmarks. This means that for most academics there is little choice but to apply for grant funding whether the time will be recognised or not.

In this environment, the high time cost of applying contributes to a negative feedback loop, whereby teachingresearch staff forgo publication opportunities (another requirement for academic promotion) in order to apply, and therefore become more dependent on the outcomes of their application. Staff with no external research funding are allocated higher teaching workloads, making it even more difficult to apply. Conversely, staff with external funding often use this for teaching buyouts, which assists in meeting the high time cost required to apply for further funding, accelerating the virtuous cycle and the bifurcation between “research active” and “non research active staff.”

A way to open ARC grants to more researchers and to reduce the opportunity cost of applying would be to move to a two-stage application process. In stage one a short expression of interest would be submitted. From these a select group of applicants would be invited to submit a full application. This would:
• reduce the volume of full-length applications that need to be reviewed by ARC reviewers
• increase the success rates of those completing full-length applications
• reduce lost productivity spent on unsuccessful full-length applications

Recommendation: Introduce a two-stage application process for all ARC grant programs

In addition to the two-stage application process, the application process should be reviewed regarding the details currently required in each application and the necessity for such details to be provided. For example, current applications require detailed budget estimates for tasks that are to take place years in the future. This level of detail may not be necessary for assessors. In addition, some requirements around formatting are unnecessarily prescriptive, and increase the burden on applicants and reviewers.

Recommendation: Review the application process and remove overly prescriptive style and budget estimate requirements

Q7 – PROCESS IMPROVEMENTS

In addition to making job security an object of the Act there are several process improvements that can be made to solve the crisis of insecure work in research.

IMPROVED JOB SECURITY THROUGH WORKFORCE PLANNING AND TRANSITION FUNDING

It is not necessary that most Australian researchers live and work from contract to contract, each personally carrying the funding risk associated with finite grant timelines. Better workforce planning by major employers like public universities would help. Our recent survey found that only 7% of researchers said that they had “nontransferable skills that would not be required beyond the end of their current contract”. In contrast 51% reported that they “had readily transferable skills that were likely to be needed by their employer beyond the end of their current contract,” with the remainder somewhere in between.

This means that in a large number of cases employers will be able to redeploy research staff internally even when grant funding on a particular project ends. This requires planning and coordination, but it is not beyond the capabilities of our large institutions. To support institutions to begin shifting their thinking in this area the ARC should establish a Researcher Transition Fund. This could subsidise the first year of post-grant employment in cases where an employer converts a researcher to continuing employment before the expiration of their current contract, and a suitable grant funded position is not immediately found to transition them into.

Transition funding could also be used to provide research staff with the time needed to complete their next funding application (solving the issue of current grants needing to be used to build applications for future grants).

Recommendation: the ARC establish a Researcher Transition Fund by diverting a fixed percentage of funding each year to a dedicated pool

Recommendation: the ARC work with institutions to develop (and publish) best practices for research workforce planning

IMPROVED CAREER PROGRESSION AND JOB SECURITY THROUGH APPROPRIATE GRANT SIZING AND DURATION

Many research staff are paid fully or partially out of non-fellowship grant monies, especially under the Discovery program. Total grant budgets however are often inadequate to cover the actual costs of employing the researchers named on the original application. Host institutions are relied upon to make up these gaps. This inhibits the careers of research staff as grants are often inadequate to allow for promotion or professional development during the period of the grant. NTEU has found that researchers are sometimes mis-classified as professional staff, rather than academic staff, to reduce costs to fit within awarded grant amounts. This is an unethical and unfair practice. Reliance on institutional top-up also re-enforces the strength of applications from G08 universities over smaller institutions.

In addition to this, the duration of Fellowships is usually five years, while Discovery grants tend to be awarded for only 3 years. This contributes to the problem of insecure employment. NTEU agrees with others in the sector that in that five-year grants should be made the norm, with a review of progress at the three-year point if necessary. Five-year grants allow for proper planning and development of world class research projects, whilst also providing for better job security for our researchers and career progression.

Recommendation: that ARC put in place compliance checks to ensure that staff employed on research grants receive their basic entitlements under relevant Enterprise Agreements

Recommendation: as a funding condition of all grants, employers be required at a minimum to employ researchers for the entire duration of the grant period

GRANT TIMELINES CONTRIBUTE TO JOB INSECURITY

Long delays between applications closing and grants being announced has contributed to uncertainty for researchers, and the Union is aware of instances whereby a researcher’s employment has been terminated, or an offer of employment withdrawn, due to delays in grant announcements. This is clearly unacceptable.

NTEU therefore welcomes the Minister for Education Jason Clare’s instruction in his Statement of Expectations to the ARC that all future ‘grants rounds are delivered on time, to a predetermined timeframe.’

NTEU agrees with the recommendation made by Science and Technology Australia to this Review that a fixed timetable for future ARC grant rounds be included in the annual amendment to the Act that determines the annual funding cap. This would include:
• The opening date for each scheme
• The closing date for each scheme
• The announcement date of all grants under each scheme

We note however, that ensuring adherence to set timelines for grants in itself will not resolve the deeply ingrained problem of job insecurity for research staff. There needs to be a far more wholistic approach taken, including for the full funding of research grants.

HIDDEN JOB INSECURITY

The Department of Education currently provides data on the gender breakdown for all higher education staff across the tenurial (continuing), fixed term and casual employment groups, but it does not provide figures on how many research-only staff are tenurial and how many are fixed term and casual, despite collecting this data from universities – irrespective of intention, this acts to conceal the true scale of the problem. The government should resolve this. At the same time the ARC itself should publish data on people employed using ARC funds. By doing this the ARC can be a leader in transparency and contribute to the public discussion on this issue.

Recommendation: The government undertake an audit of the use of fixed term contracts in the higher education and research sectors including non-ARC funded research

Recommendation: Amend the Act to specify that in its annual report the ARC must report on the job security of all persons employed under ARC grants and progress towards reducing fixed term contingent employment 13

Recommendation: The Department provide data on the employment type of research staff in their annual staffing data release

REMOVE STRUCTURAL BIAS AGAINST EARLY CAREER RESEARCHERS

There is a strong perception among some fixed term research staff (perpetuated by internal university research support departments) that they are not eligible to be named as chief investigators, or that being named as chief investigator will seriously inhibit the chances at grant success. This leads to ongoing staff often being named as chief investigator on grant applications with which they only had peripheral input and the misappropriation of credit.

This contributes to the structural disadvantage that early career researchers face, reducing career opportunities and raising equity issues when credit for successful applications is handed to more senior staff.

Presently, people who are named to be employed if a grant is successful cannot be applicants for that same grant – leading to similar issues of misappropriated credit and ghost writing.

Recommendation: Allow early career applicants to draw a salary from Discovery grants

Recommendation: Clarify eligibility rules around fixed term applicants to reduce the hesitation of institutions in putting forward applications with fixed term staff as leads.

Q8 – ERA

NTEU supports the view presented in the consultation paper that the ERA has outlived its purpose and should be retired.

In the experience of our members, the ERA process has been time consuming and burdensome for all parties. More concerning, however, is that universities have attempted to manipulate outcomes in previous iterations of the ERA process. A part of this has been through the direction of staff to publish in certain journals, or under certain FOR codes, sometimes at odds with the researcher’s actual area of expertise or the academically accepted journals in that field. This level of micromanagement has undermined the autonomy of researchers and infringed upon academic freedom. While the ARC was not responsible for these perverse responses by university managements it should be aware that any types of quantitative measurements of research output will have the potential to incentivise counter-productive behaviour by institutions.

As such, any alternative mechanism intended to assess research quality and impact must be conscious of the negative institutional behaviours and unintended consequences that resulted from both university managements and researchers responding to the ERA.

Q9 – EVOLUTION CAPABILITY

The ARC should continue to perform its own independent research on the impact of research outputs, using a variety of methodologies beyond current quantitative citation orthodoxy. In this process, however, the ARC needs to ensure that it does not establish a culture of league tables.

The Union is concerned that the creation of league tables of publications will result in pressure on researchers to move their research focus. Furthermore, noting the behaviours seen with the ERA, it is inevitable that institutional managers will seek to ‘game’ the system to move their rankings within these tables. The effect of this will undoubtedly be to reduce academic freedom and opportunities for researcher driven research. It may also see a narrowing of research focus as universities seek to shift their researchers’ efforts more to improving their institution’s place on league tables rather than expanding knowledge capacity.

Q10 – ANY OTHER COMMENTS

Taking a high-level view, around half of the government research funding going to universities comes via competitive grant programs and the other half is allocated via Research Block Grants and the Research Training Scheme. This ratio should not be taken for granted – the extent to which research should be funded on a competitive basis, project by project, at the national level needs to be the subject of further discussion and debate. As noted above there are actual costs associated with having most academics in Australia applying for discrete research funding as a requirement of their career when the ratio of grants to applications is so low.

There is a case to make for more basic research funding through research block grant style programs or smaller locally issued grants, doing away with the need for ARC applications for the bulk of teaching-research academics. This would reduce the burden of application review on the ARC, increase researcher directed basic research and reduce grant contingent employment, thereby improving job security across the sector.

ARC grant funding could be reserved for larger projects with multiple applicants and longer time horizons.

In our recent survey we asked researchers where they think additional funding should be directed, while there was no clear single preference, there was interest in both more base funding and a higher number of research council grants. The desire for more grants over longer grants is likely indicative of the damaging effects that low success rates have had on the careers of so many academics.

There is also interest among researchers in the idea of small locally administered grants. Our members often commented that they could achieve significant outputs with smaller half year teaching buyouts or modest travel budgets – yet these smaller amounts often do not warrant the excessive burden (and time risk) of a full ARC application.

APPROPRIATE RESOURCING FOR INTERNAL UNIVERSITY RESEARCH SUPPORT STAFF

The resourcing and practices of internal university and research institute research support departments differ greatly. These differences can feed into the structural biases towards larger institutions, the role of access to institutional support in application success should be considered by the review as an equity issue.

In our recent survey 38% of respondents said that the level of institutional support available at their institution was a reason they felt they were not able to apply for grants on an equal footing with their peers. 16 Our survey confirmed that the support provided to applicants by different institutions varies significantly, with 45% of respondents in our survey saying the level of application support provided by their institutions was below their expectations and had hindered their ability to apply.

One form of institutional support that respondents regularly requested were bridging funds from their local institution for the completion of subsequent grant applications at the end of their current grant employment period – this would also be achieved by the establishment of a national transition fund as recommended above.

LIFT TOTAL INVESTMENT IN AUSTRALIAN RESEARCH

As a final note it needs to be stressed that current ARC funding levels are around $200m per year behind where they would have been if ARC funding had been properly indexed to CPI each budget since 2011-12. This real decline in funding contributes to many of the issues we currently face. If the government is serious about investing in Australian research, this gap needs to be filled and appropriate levels of indexation should be established in legislation.

Recommendation: Guarantee funding security to the ARC by codifying minimum annual CPI based increases to total ARC funding

Submission received

14 December 2022

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