A tale of two reviews

The government established two reviews early in its term: one focused on the university system and one on the science system. I was asked to chair both as the issues are related. We consulted with academics, researchers, industry, students and many other stakeholders. The cabinet papers setting up the reviews contained the direction to be imaginative and ambitious. Each review produced both an interim and final report (web-assets.education.go… , , web-assets.education.go… ,mbie.govt.nz/assets/Sci… ).

A healthy liberal democracy requires both a vibrant university system and an effective and broad research system. But there was an understanding that as a small country we needed to focus on efficiency and effectiveness in our university system and that choices would need to be made within the constraining research budget.

The University reviews noted the need to address the consequences of a decades-long somewhat passive approach to university policy. The science system reviews recommended considerable restructuring which, with some caveats, is underway. But the primary inference of the science reports was the inadequate levels funding relative to comparable countries – this remains a major reason for New Zealand’s dismal productivity and flies in the face of a large amount of international data, especially that related to smaller economies. It is a fundamental principle of economics - without investment there can be no return.

The reviews identified that the impact of technology will be enormous. I will leave comment on the issues that arise for another time but artificial intelligence will profoundly change both the way science is done and reported and is starting to have impacts on the evolution of higher education.

The reviews took at their starting point that New Zealand needed a world class university system and an effective research system, while being proportionate to our population and economy. The universities and science system now have one minister, which was recommended, although still through different ministries with different priorities. Combination into a single ministry would bring New Zealand in line with international practice and avoid the inevitable policy silos they confront.

Universities are the responsibility of the Ministry of Education, yet it is inevitable that they receive lesser focus given their other compelling priorities.  The Tertiary Education Commission has no formal policy role.  Politicians are perhaps reluctant to address the issues within the university system in part because they may be perceived as undermining the principles of institutional autonomy on which the modern research university is based.  The result is that there is little ability for the system to be overseen as a strategic whole. The political focus has been on cost control, student fees and allowances, rather than on the purpose and quality of the institutions themselves.  

The eight universities would be better seen as system within which a critical dimension of our nation’s future is formed. They are complex organizations which collectively spend directly or indirectly (through student allowances, research grants etc.) a significant fraction of government expenditure. Issues of university governance were highlighted not only in our review but in another external but ignored review two decades ago (atem.org.au/eknowledge-… ) which reached similar conclusions. The result is inappropriate competition and duplication, and institutions struggling in the international context in which they must operate. We have become self-satisfied with the ranking of our universities: yet our leading university is ranked seventh at best in Australasia and yet we wonder about the apparent brain drain of our brightest young people after high school.

Universities have been reluctant to address the need for rationalization on what courses are provided or develop focused pillars of research excellence (which also would need cooperation with the research system). The review concluded that the universities needed to be treated as a system with less individualistic positioning.  They are starting to move to make it easier for students to take courses across institutions. At the same time, they face increasing competition from online courses provided internationally, private training institutions and the need to restructure the types of qualifications provided and address the growing needs in lifelong learning and micro-credentialling.

Globally universities have been accused of losing focus and becoming institutions of activism rather than addressing their core roles of teaching, research and producing knowledge This has led to serious political abreactions elsewhere. This has generally not been the case here, although there will always be debate about the scope of academic freedom – a matter I have spoken about elsewhere (informedfutures.org/aca… ).

Universities are key institutions of liberal demoracies. They are the intellectual wellsprings of a nation, they train a wide variety of young people and are vehicles of social mobility, they conduct research across a broad range of domains and they generate and transfer knowledge to society in many ways – the production of graduates, through the generation of new knowledge and engaging with the communities they are embedded within. They are built around communities of scholars and students. They are some of the most globally interconnected parts of New Zealand society. They are also the largest component of our national research system.

Just as investing in young minds has a long-term return (particularly if we retain them in New Zealand), so too does investment in research and that must be balanced across the portfolio from basic to very applied. This is the case even if we must, as a small country, focus our effort where we have the most need. And this need is not only in economic growth but also through the many ways in which science assists in stewardship of our assets: social, environmental, economic and diplomatic.  The reviews emphasized the need for a comprehensive portfolio encompassing stewardship research including much social science, humanities and environmental research. But it also pointed to the need to improve the pathway from invention to exploitation (from ‘IP to IPO’ as the report entitled it)

Returns on investment in any sector are directly linked to the amount invested and it is reasonable to draw the extrapolation that one fundamental reason for the productivity gap with comparable countries that has grown larger over 30 years is the chronic unwillingness of successive governments to invest adequately in research for the future.  The countries we most appropriately compare ourselves to all invest much more proportionately in academic research than we do. There is no debate that it pays off. Indeed, the evidence shows quite clearly that private sector responds well when ideas flow from universities and research organizations, but OECD data suggest that the payoff occurs when the state’s investment is closer to 1% of GDP than our current 0.6%.

The government has identified that research is critical to the nation’s growth in its five-point economic policy statement. But restructuring without adequate investment cannot possibly achieve what is hoped and inevitably strains an already strained system further. The Prime Minister’s Science Innovation and Technology Advisory Council (PMSITAC) has been required to provide its advice within the current funding envelope. There is an irony here – we certainly need greater investment in advanced technologies, but we are doing this by raiding other sectors which have been highly productive.

If one looks back over the past 30 years and compares our lack of productivity growth to that of other small advanced economies, the one factor that stands out is that as a country we failed to recognize that, as domestic manufacturing fell in the face of globalization, other small countries invested significantly in science and innovation and their results are compelling. We must get beyond our naïve exceptionalism and confront the reality that our future as an advanced economy is dependent on knwoeldge and technology. We cannot realistically expect to remain a developed economy without doing so.

A public desire for trajectory-changing policies is growing. That requires a longer-term focus. While times are economically and geopolitically tough, surely this is the time to get beyond short-termism which come with the three-year political cycle, make some hard choices and foster these sectors so the nation can grow.