Profile & Trends 2007: New Zealand's Tertiary Education Sector

Research in the tertiary education sector

The research performance of the tertiary education sector improved in several areas in 2007. In the area of research training, enrolments in doctoral degrees increased substantially. This was driven by a significant increase in international enrolments, which occurred in response to a change in government policy to fund international doctoral students on the same basis as domestic students.

In the area of research output, the universities showed improvement in a number of areas. Overall, the amount of research contract income earned by the universities per academic staff member rose in real terms between 2005 and 2006. Total research output dropped slightly at two out of the three universities that reported research output in 2007. The academic impact of research by the New Zealand universities relative to the world average increased between 1998-2002 and 2003-2007 in eight of the 10 broad subject areas monitored. Three of those 10 subject areas – health, medicine and public health; mathematics; and information sciences and technology – had an academic impact above the world average in 2003-2007.

Chapter 12 contains a study that compares the New Zealand universities’ pattern of research performance across four dimensions. The article also examines the performance of selected Australian universities across similar performance measures and makes comparisons between the two countries. Included in the chapter on research funding is a study examining the changes in research funding that have resulted from the introduction of the Performance-Based Research Fund. The study considers whether this has resulted in any ‘undue’ concentration of funding in a few research-intensive universities.