10 August 2010

The rationale for the Research Workforce Strategy is to match the supply of qualified and quality researchers to the demand generated by an ageing academic workforce and increased student loads towards 2020 as Australia seeks the skills to deliver the improved productivity necessary to secure Australia's ongoing growth and prosperity. An additional rationale is to enhance Australia's competitiveness in the global innovation marketplace through the expansion of Australia's research and development profile, an aspiration underlying the Government's innovation white paper Powering Ideas.

The consultation paper "Meeting Australia's Research Workforce Needs" asks respondents to consider whether the paper adequately identifies the opportunities and challenges Australia faces in:

• The changing nature of employer demands and meeting innovation aspirations;
• Delivering the required level of research skills to the Australian workplace through the increase in of Higher Degree by Research (HDR) qualified individuals; and,
• The provision of productive and viable career pathways for researchers at every stage of their careers to encourage HDR qualified individuals to stay in a research career.

The Research Workforce Strategy is a solid start at summarising the challenges and opportunities associated with each of the themes above. It is strong in options where Government levers for action are clear and the Council supports the extension of the Research Training Scheme (RTS) and a review of the current research training funding formulas which leave HASS areas under-resourced. Before the strategy is finalised, however, more work is needed in the following areas:

• The paper needs to more clearly identify the short and long-term challenges and opportunities facing Australia's research workforce, such as the ageing of the academic workforce in the short-term and the overall expansion of the research workforce in the long term, and to target the strategy more specifically at these challenges and opportunities. In doing so, the paper needs to outline a strategy for tracking labour demand in professions, industry and the academic workforce and to decide how research in this area will be used in both short-term and long-term workforce planning and research training decision making.
• The paper needs to lend more urgency to reforms of the research training scheme to begin to immediately address projected shortfalls in the research workforce. A wide-ranging review of the Research Training Scheme has already been concluded, and its conclusions could be utilised by the Research Workforce Strategy to ensure action in the short term.
• The strategy at this stage has not developed the incentives and tracking mechanisms to encourage universities and other research training providers to implement long-term human resources development strategies, including the mandating of talent management and succession strategies. In the short-term, the paper though identifying the casualisation of the academic workforce as a cause for concern, the table 'Proposed priority areas for action' presents no strategies or actions to address the issue.
• The paper needs to recognise the role of individual discipline areas in identifying and addressing the supply and demand of research staff, and in developing productive and viable career pathways for researchers. Mentoring programs, talent development and succession strategies, for example, could be effective operated at a disciplinary level.
• The strategy needs to outline a pathway for policy coordination and cooperation between DEEWR and DIISR relating to research workforce needs in the Education and Training sector, especially in meeting the higher education attainment targets set in response to the Bradley Review.

The consultation paper proposes a number of key reforms to achieve the innovation and education aspirations underpinning the Research Workforce Strategy. It gives roles to government, universities and other research training providers, and employers of research staff in addressing four priority areas:

1. Attraction and retention of students and researchers
2. Enhancement of the quality of the research training experience
3. Facilitation of pathways into and transitions within research careers in Australia
4. Improvement of Australia's information base with respect to the research workforce

The paper adopts a broad definition of the research workforce to include both the actual (those employed in research positions) and potential (those with research qualifications) research workforce. It has more focus on researchers within academic environments but also includes public sector and private industry researchers. The consultation paper draws from months of consultation with relevant stakeholders and two commissioned studies - Employer Demand for Researchers in Australia (Allen Consulting Group) and Australia's Future Research Workforce: Supply, Demand and Influence Factors (Access Economics). As such it attempts to consolidate a wide-range of concerns from across the relevant sectors into a coherent strategy. The paper is useful as a summary of the challenges and opportunities facing Australia's future research workforce, but is light on specific policy detail to address the main concerns highlights by the sector, particularly the ageing of the workforce and the need to boost the number of domestic student commencing and completing Higher Degrees by Research. Feedback and industry response should give the Government a more solid feel for the problems involved.

The paper includes a table of 'Proposed priority areas for actions' across the short (2011-2013), medium (2014-2016) and long term (2017-2020), which picks up some of the issues identified in the paper for specific action. The paper highlights Government action in the areas of, for example:

• research training
  • short term: opening Australian Postgraduate Awards (APAs) to International Postgraduate Research Scholarship (IPRS) recipients, the extension of APAs to four years, and conducting a review of the RTS, developing strategies to improve international research linkages, developing strategies to allow more flexible pathways to achieving a doctorate,
  • Medium-term: doubling the number of IPRS, implementation of recommendations of the review of the research training scheme, review of existing funding settings for research training.
• Monitoring research quality,
• Development and continual monitoring of data collection relating to the research workforce,
• Over the medium and long term the implementation of strategies to improve international research collaboration and smoother migration and visa processing for international recruitment and collaboration,
• Enhancing research and development through tax incentives.

It highlights the main areas of action for universities and other research training providers as:

• Addressing issues of flexibility in HDR candidature,
• Enhancement of data collection methods, and
• Development of better institutional support for international students.
• Action identified for employers of research staff include:
  • Enhancement of policies to support international research staff,
  • Establishing working relationships with research training providers to ensure employer needs are met, and
  • The implementation of talent management and succession strategies.

While the table separates out areas for action for each group of stakeholders, it needs still to nominate who is responsible for ensuring the implementation of the Research Workforce Strategy across a wide-group of stakeholders.

See the Council's full submission

 

Please direct any feedback to:

Heidi Hutchison

Research and Policy Officer

Council of the Humanties, Arts and Social Sciences

policy [at] chass.org.au | www.chass.org.au