Future Fellowships - feedback
Posted on | May 29, 2008 |
A discussion paper describing the Rudd Government’s planned Future Fellowships for mid-career researchers is now available on the ARC website (the pdf is here). I’d urge people to take a look at it at this stage, because there is some cause for concern about the proposed model, particularly for arts and humanities researchers.
The weighting of the selection criteria for the awards gives 50% to the individual’s record, 20% for the project’s strategic alignment with the proposed host university and 20% for collaboration evidence (with industry, across institutions, or across disciplines). It also awards 10% for areas of national priority, which will set limits on the kind of research that will ever be funded through this scheme.
The model seems to be based on the Federation Fellowships currently available for senior scholars but this is problematic in a number of ways. Firstly, fellowships are timed to begin in the second half of the year, which doesn’t match the current ARF/APD cycle. Wasn’t the whole point to offer continuity for research careers, and alleviate the anxiety and time commitment of having to apply for funding far in advance of when it was really needed? Apparently not - the document reveals how much these fellowships are being targeted to bringing overseas Australians back home to work.
Secondly, it puts a lot of onus on young researchers to sell themselves to an employer for top dollar when technically they may have only been out of their PhD for 5 years. It takes longer than that to be able to wield bargaining power or monetize networks, even if such objectives were really key to producing world-class scholarship. This model also means young researchers will be pressured to place themselves in the established research areas of universities they may have little or no relationship with, and spend valuable time trying to build that relationship without any financial backing, or when they may be only half way through a current project.
Finally the draft makes no mention of support for parental leave during the fellowships and how this affects part-time or full-time transitions during the overall limit of 6 years. Can we expect people who are the likely candidates for these grants to have had the time to have any, let alone all their babies?
I hope others will feel compelled to respond to the draft (submissions close June 27). We are used to having to feel grateful for any kind of initiative to boost research spending in this country, but these abstract documents need to be populated by and interrogated with the concerns of actually existing, not to mention aspiring researchers.
Comments
3 Responses to “Future Fellowships - feedback”
Leave a Reply
May 29th, 2008 @ 4:00 pm
Mel, if others feel as you do about this (which I certainly do) what do you think about a group (and co-signed) response to the draft?
As a related aside, did anyone else feel rankled to read in yesterday’s higher ed (in reference to the impending retirements of aging academics) that there is a ‘lost generation’ of academics in their 20s and 30s - lost, according to the author, ‘for unknown reasons’. I nearly choked on my museli. Unknown reasons? What a joke.
May 30th, 2008 @ 10:13 am
Yes, a group response sounds good. If people want to follow through on this do get in touch with either Emily or moi.
May 30th, 2008 @ 2:53 pm
harumph … no babies for you!
Bloody women and their demands. You want a research job or not?