AUSTRALIA’S education minister, David Kemp, was well advised to release his
white paper on university research in the week before Christmas. The policy
proposals are so inadequate they have even been criticised by the national
press. And the timing may have moderated the volume of protest from the halls of
academe.
The white paper, entitled Knowledge and Innovation, does not even acknowledge
the resource problems affecting university research, let alone propose
solutions. On the contrary, it is quite sanguine about the level of support,
about A$1.3 billion a year.
To put that amount of money into perspective, total research funding…
