
“What is the purpose of research funding?” Phew, that is a big question. If I could hear your answers, I am sure there would be a wide range of opinions.
Let’s put that in the too hard basket. What about this question, “what should research funding not do? Again, I can imagine lots of answers, but there are likely some answers that we could all agree on.
How about an axiom that “a research funding scheme should never cost more than it awards.” Who could possibly disagree with that?
There’s a simple recipe for creating a cost-negative scheme:
- Invite as many people to apply as possible,
- Reward a tiny number.
Result: the time people spend applying eclipses the time awarded by the funding.
There’s an ongoing example of this bitter recipe, the Australian Consortium for Social and Political Research Incorporated Fellowship Programme, which in the last two years has had 100 and 160 applications for just one winner, a success rate of 1 per cent, at best.
The ACSPRI award is $25,000, so if the applicants spent an average of just two days on their application (which includes a two-page application and five-minute video), then the funding is more than swallowed up by the applicants’ time. Costing it at a conservative minimum wage, the totals are $35,000 for 100 applicants and $56,000 for 160 applicants.
There is also the time of the peer reviewers and anybody who helped the applicants. Plus the opportunity costs for almost all the applicants.
ACSPRI does not feel these externalised costs.
Fixing the recipe is simple, award much more money and/or severely limit the number of applicants. If these options are not possible, then the best option is to bin it.
Professor Adrian Barnett works at the Australian Centre for Health Services and Innovation at QUT.