The benefits of research aren't just economic

"Forcing research and innovation to fit corporate needs exclusively sounds like a pretty blunt way to govern how public funds are awarded and used in universities. Granted, in a political environment touting austerity, it is difficult to argue with the need to create more jobs in Australia if one way to do that is to redirect the results of taxpayer-funded research out of the public domain and into privately owned enterprise. Yet to compel universities to commercialise research by rewarding the registration of patents only is to bulldoze in a very cramped image of what actually constitutes the full spectrum of pure, strategic, applied and experimental research. Only one of those — applied research — is aimed at an outcome that might serve a client-directed purpose. Yet all four kinds of research play a vital role in creating knowledge. Statements about the importance of increasing job security for everyone are fairly easy to understand. So too are the calls for greater interaction between research and industry. With an estimated 80% of Australian university researchers working under short-term or casual contracts (some with the dreaded one-hour hire or fire clause), it would be a reasonable claim that most workers in the higher education sector comprehend these two things just as well as the next person. But there are complex issues surrounding the proposal that the work of researchers should be regulated to prioritise business outcomes only. If the commercialisation of research and patents was to be the sole standard that means success and ongoing government endorsement, then thorny questions crowd in. Universities aren’t factories In what way should publicly funded institutions be able to grant licences to business for research and innovation that has been paid for by taxpayer money? What impact might a focus on patenting and commercialisation have on the public mandate of universities? How can the government’s open access policy, which is to ensure the widest possible uptake of research supported by the public purse, ever be truly fulfilled if an equally contradictory grant framework is in place that instead favours and rewards the transfer of intellectual property into business hands only? And how will the direction of research be affected in those peer-reviewed disciplines centred on increasing our knowledge of humanity, culture and society? ..."