The results of the latest MBIE annual contestable science funding round are out here. The results are very much in line with expectations set in the requests for proposals issued in November last year (which have vanished from the MBIE website) but they do raise some issues of consistency of funding for important areas of expertise.
As always, for those who put in proposals the results make fascinating reading and for those who don’t, well, not so much. Which is a shame because what gets funded is going to be important to the New Zealand economy, and society, as Minister Joyce said in his press release. For more information the Science Media Centre have done their usual good job of summarising the results and rounding up the press in the area. I was particularly drawn to the NBR’s headline “Winners and losers in the latest government science funding round” from their list but it turned out (spoiler alert) to be mostly about winners with couple of wry shrugs from those who didn’t do so well. As you would expect when they’ll have to go back for more money next year – if they can.
This year the bulk of the funding sat in the High Value Manufacturing and Services Fund so, with Industrial Research having morphed into Callaghan Innovation and not contesting for funding, that left the field open to the Universities. And that showed in the results, with the universities getting nearly 80% of the total, the CRIs a bit less than 20% and independent research groups taking the little bit left over. Last year, with most money in the Biological Industries Fund, the CRIs took 60%, the independents nearly 30% and the Universities just 10%. There was the special funding pool for the independents in play last year as well, which wasn’t available this year. I think the absence of the specific funding for independents was the major factor in the number of organisations getting funding dropping from a high 17 last year to 13 this. Of those missing out on funding completely I was most surprised by AUT University who I thought would have the contacts with industry to do well in the High Value Manufacturing round.
The big winner this year was the University of Auckland, receiving more than a third of the total; quite a jump from last year’s 6%. Last year I tried to argue that Auckland did pretty well (at nearly twice as much as the rest of the Universities combined) given that the research questions on offer didn’t really mesh with Auckland’s strengths, but their then Dean of Science, Grant Guilford, was less sanguine. A lot of effort had gone into the bidding without proportionate return.
I think that the temptation to bid even if the research questions don’t suit your work is too hard for many researchers to resist and even harder for administrators. In such a tight funding environment it is difficult not to chase rainbows. From the groups I worked with I thought that maybe things had got better but, on checking, it turns out that this year’s overall success rate of 23% was only marginally better than last year’s of 22%.[1] With that sort of success rate if the work isn’t an exact fit for the request for proposals then scientists need to spend their time more productively than on writing fruitless bids. All that happens is that the overhead rates go up.
Of the other universities Waikato did well, taking over 20% of the total funding. Otago and Canterbury also had big increases over last year, again reflecting the different fund profile. Victoria was back on the board after a not such a good round last year but a significant amount looks to come from one of the teams that came from the former CRI, Industrial Research Limited.
But what of the losers promised in NBR’s headline? Because there was very little money in Biological Industries this year the primary sector facing groups were always going to miss out. The successful High Value Manufacturing and Services proposals also had a strong IT and materials focus and a number of groups with strong MBIE track records missed out, particularly health area. These swings make the funding lumpy and it is hard to maintain capacity.
Next year’s round was due to be pretty small with $1.4m a year available in each of Biological Industries and High Value Manufacturing and Services Funds. Extra funding was announced for contestable funding rounds in the last Budget. Without the new money the groups that missed out this year, especially those not involved in the National Science Challenges, will be in a really poor position because the amount of funding in the contestable rounds would have been very low for the next three years. Even with the extra funding next year’s round isn’t huge, up from around $10m to $30m odd, and there is no indication yet as to where the extra money will go.
Looking even further out in MBIEs predictions for funding rounds in the National Statement of Science Investment you can see waves of funding propagating. 2019/20 is huge for Biological Industries (over $30m per year available) with almost nothing else from 2015 to 2023. Miss out and you are toast. High Value Manufacturing has big years in 2018/19 and 2022/23 with some pretty lean times between. I’m hoping that the additional funding from the Budget will be used to smooth out these waves, and also that more will be found as the Government heads for a science funding level of 0.8% of GDP. I’m also hoping that the research questions will be carefully targeted to fill gaps and pick up capacity that misses out in the down rounds. Or maybe the system could be tweaked.
I know it isn’t fashionable when money is tight but thought needs to go into what happens when a research group suddenly loses funding and needs to regroup and refocus or lose hard earned expertise. Sudden swings in funding just chases good researchers offshore. Core Purpose Funding was there to help with the CRIs and maybe PBRF for the universities. But with the National Science Challenges taking up resource the sudden shifts in funding seem to be getting worse.
It was encouraging to see the problem of rigidity being flagged in the National Statement of Science Investment but emphasis needs to be given to ensuring maintenance of important capacity and giving it a chance to address emerging ideas. Not starting from scratch each time there is a shift in what seems important. Otherwise we’ll be looking around for the people to take our science into the future and thinking – bugger, fired them a year ago and they’ve gone to Aus. It’s happened before.
Disclosure statement: George Slim was involved in helping a number of groups with their MBIE bidding. Most of his best work this year was in persuading people not to make proposals and get on with their real work. He also likes cutting and pasting numbers into Excel and using the sumif function. George bought his third robot vacuum cleaner last week.
