Innovation economy needs human capital

The ATN has acknowledged the commitment shown by the Labor Government to support collaboration between universities and industry, but urges both parties to pay greater attention to the renewal of Australia’s research workforce.

ATN Executive Director, Ms Vicki Thomson, said that programs such as the recently announced Clean 21 Linkage Industry Research Training Awards Scheme show an encouraging recognition of the need for end-user focused research activity to be supported.

“Government has said that we should be moving towards an innovation economy as the way forward for the country,” Ms Thomson said. “Clearly in such an economy, Australia’s ability to innovate and improve productivity will rely on increased levels of R&D activity in business, and collaboration between universities and industry.

“Initiatives such as the industrial PhD awards and the Joint Research Engagement scheme show recognition of that fact and are most welcome. However, an innovation economy will need a vibrant research community to support it, and more needs to be done to help ensure we have enough quality researchers to do so.

“Recent modelling shows that we are facing shortfalls of research-trained people as early as 2012. However, despite this problem, action to address the issue has generally been slow in coming. Both parties’ policies need to recognise the importance of ensuring Australia’s innovation workforce requirements are met and act accordingly.

“The ATN’s position paper, ‘Skill Build - Nation Build: Meeting Australia's research workforce needs’ sets out the key elements that we believe must be adopted in order to ensure Australia is equipped with the skilled workforce necessary to face the economic and social challenges for the next few decades.

“For example, we would like to see a commitment to increase funding for the Research Training Scheme, the mechanism by which universities fund the education of our research graduates. Universities currently support additional students via practices such as cross-subsidisation of research training from funds dedicated to other purposes, and a reduction in the resources made available per student, which is clearly unsustainable.

“Likewise, the supply of research-trained individuals will not be met wholly through domestic sources. It is critical that the policy environment makes immigration requirements for international research students and research-qualified graduates a smooth and easy process. While it may be the case that we are moving towards stricter immigration standards, these are not the people that we want to keep out.

“It is vital that we ensure our research workforce needs are met if Australia is to build the strong innovation system required to support our economy as a whole. We would like to see some detailed policy commitments to support and fund the changes that will be required to build that workforce.”

Download the position paper