$1B research support: who gets what?
The recent Australian Federal Budget announced the injection of an additional (one-off) $1 Billion through the Research Support Program (RSP) in 2021 to alleviate the immediate financial pressures on universities during the COVID-19 pandemic. These additional funds will be provided to eligible providers based on the current RSP funding method - on the basis of 47 per cent competitive (Category 1) research income and 53 per cent engagement (Category 2-4) research income, as measured against the last two financial years of HERDC income.
Universities will receive this additional funding from January 2021.
My recent article "University degrees of pain" outlined the extent of pain being felt by the sector as a result of Covid-19 and the associated loss of international student income. Although this $1B is far from the amount lost to date, it will be greatly appreciated across Australia's higher education sector.
I have used the following RSP formula and the most recent publicly available (2017 and 2018) HERDC income data to arrive at the likely distribution to universities (modifying the 50% percent split to the above-mentioned 47%/53% basis of distribution, as per the budget announcement).
Who gets what?
The following chart outlines my estimates of the likely distribution of the funds to Higher Education Providers (HEPs) in 2021.
The Group of Eight (Go8) - $43M to $118M
Go8 universities are the big winners receiving almost two-thirds of the funds with a total of $660M. Melbourne could receive $118M, while UNSW, UQ, Monash and Sydney may each receive between $93M and $98M. ANU comes in sixth with around $74M. Adelaide and UWA round out the Go8 both with $43M.
The next eleven - $16M to $25M
Newcastle, UTAS, QUT and Curtin could each receive between $23M and $25M, while a group of seven universities (UniSA, Griffith, La Trobe, Wollongong, Macquarie, UTS and Deakin) could receive between $16M and $19M.
The next eight - $8M to $13M
RMIT, Flinders, CDU and JCU will receive between $11M and $13M, with WSU, Swinburne, UNE and Murdoch entitled to around $8M-$9M.
The rest - less than $5M
Of the remaining universities, ten will receive between $1M and $5M, while Bond, Notre Dame, Divinity, Torrens and BIITE will receive a little over $2M between them.
In Conclusion
Our universities are in a world of pain and few have the reserves and financing ability to ride through the storm without major structural and operational change. This one-off funding support will go some way to providing some short term relief for university researchers in 2021, but there remains significant funding gaps to close in the years that follow.
Key Questions
How will these funds be applied? How can they be best leveraged? What happens beyond 2021?
Mike Pepperell is Managing Consultant at CIS and has advised more than a dozen universities over much of the past decade.
Throughout 2020 our team has continued to work with and support academics and professional staff at more than a dozen universities in pursuit of major new revenue sources and industry connections. During this year-like-no-other our university-clients have all demonstrated four common traits - resilience, flexibility, passion and unwavering optimism!
The broader CIS team has advised around 30 universities and a number of major Research Institutes over the past 20 years, helping to raise more than $1B in research and infrastructure funding in the course of their strategy and implementation consulting engagements (and more than $4B when partner cash and in-kind contributions are included).
Industry engagement is a particular sweet spot, with over a decade of CRC-related consulting activity - including support the four successful Round 20 CRC bids and four of the five successful Round 21 bids (securing a total of $342M in Commonwealth Government CRC Program funding)!