Council for the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences

Australian Financial Reveiw   Rachel Lebihan

10 March 2008

We're basically facing a tsunami of retirements in the next 10 years.

Universities have united in calling for an urgent review of supply. and demand for PhD graduates, larger scholarships, and a re-evaluation of university funding for the humanities, arts and social sciences cohort in a bid to raise the status of research students at a time of national innovation scrutiny.

Led by the Council for the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, universities will write to the Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research, Kim Carr, outlining recommendations for PhD funding reform.

The move is timed to take advantage of the federal government's innovation review, and follows the government's commitment to double the number of postgraduate awards by 2010. CHASS president Stuart Cunningham said it was an "inviting environment" to push for greater prominence of PhDs, particularly those in humanities, arts and social sciences (HASS) disciplines.

At a CHASS PhD forum in Sydney on Friday there was over-riding consensus for a sector-wide review of supply and demand for PhD graduates in the workforce, particularly within universities where one-fifth to one-third of staff are expected to retire in the next l0 years.

"We're basically facing a tsunami of retirements across the sector in the next 10 years as the baby boomers finally fall off the twig and this is a key question for innovation in the country, because who is going to replace them and who is going to retrain the next generation?" Professor Cunningham said.

The group is also calling for changes to the government's research training scheme, which funds universities based on their number of PhD completions, but which places HASS disciplines in a low-cost band.

Professor Cunningham said there was anecdotal evidence that this "crude distinction between high-cost research degrees" did not reflect the cost of many of the HASS disciplines.

The meeting also drew universal agreement that PhD scholarships of $20,000 are too low.

"There is also disparity of more than a year in that the average completion rate is 4.3 years and scholarship availability is for three years, so there are some nuts and bolts there that need looking at," Professor Cunningham said.

The GRASS forum was preceded by a Group of Eight workshop aimed at improving the quality of their PhD programs through collaboration with each other, other institutions and industry.

The head of the council of postgraduate deans and directors and Monash University pro vice-chancellor (research and research training), Max King, who led the discussion, agreed that PhD students needed to be supported for longer, and said 3 years, with the potential for a six-month extension, would help.

While PhDs in the humanities, arts and social sciences were different and more difficult than those in mathmatics and engineering, took much longer to complete and on average had a higher non-completion rate, he said, there were a number of things universities universities could do to help.

For example, US universities such as Harvard and Duke were looking more carefully at the way they selected students to ensure they had appropriate research skills and were significantly reducing student loads.

Professor King said the Go8, as a first step, was looking at greater collaboration.

"We've all got a variety of facilities and it would be good if we could work out how to use more of those facilities. We are looking to see if we can get better value out of the dollars going in in terms terms of equipment, and can we do sharing of these things."

 

Australian Financial Reveiw
Rachel Lebihan
14 March 2007

 

For more information, please contact:

Toss Gascoigne

Executive Director

Council of the Humanties, Arts and Social Sciences

Phone: +61 2 6249 1995

director@chass.org.au