Research careers

Just read in the Higher Education section of The Australian that the ARC is changing some of its funding rules ‘to create more opportunities for mid-career researchers’. The number of QEII and ARF fellowships could be increased by at least 20 this year and people will be able to apply again after their first postdoc runs out. This would make it more likely that researchers could move straight from an ARF to a professorship. Is the government finally taking action to stop some of the international brain drain for full time researchers? Or is the industry getting prepared for a two tiered (research versus teaching) system? A bit of both probably.