John Ross, Is Australia’s latest research review a threat to university autonomy?, Times Higher Education, 1 October 2025
The panel’s overriding concern is to ensure that research is used productively. But observers worry that pushing universities to specialise in centrally determined ‘focus areas’ risks inadvertently turning them, in effect, into government agencies. John Ross reports.
When then science minister Ed Husic teamed up with education minister Jason Clare last December to announce the panellists and terms of reference for a “landmark review of Australia’s research and development performance”, observers were entitled to a touch of scepticism.
In 2015, innovation guru Roy Green – then dean of business at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) – did some background research for a Senate committee inquiry. He found that since the turn of the century, there had been at least 60 reviews, government-commissioned reports, ministerial policy statements and information papers addressing Australia’s innovation system.