Perspectives (Volume 3, number 16) - Indirect Research Costs & Research Chairs (fwd)

[Richard Plant]

Hello all:

The latest issue of "Perspectives".

Richard Plant
Dept of Drama, Queen's University
and
Graduate Centre for Study of Drama,
University of Toronto

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 13 Jul 2000 11:27:56 -0400
From: Fedcan <fedcan at hssfc.ca>
To: @hssfc.ca
Subject: Perspectives (Volume 3,
     number 16) - Indirect Research Costs &  Research Chairs

PERSPECTIVES
An electronic newsletter on research and science policy.  A pilot project
of the Humanities and Social Sciences Federation of Canada.

PERSPECTIVES will appear at regular intervals throughout the year and will
be posted on the Federation web site:
http://www.hssfc.ca/Pub/PublicationsEng.html.  Please address your comments
and suggestions to Jacqueline Wright, Executive Assistant, at:
jawright at hssfc.ca.

PERSPECTIVES (Volume 3, Number 16)
July 13, 2000

Editor: Wayne Kondro

Table of contents:

1)      Ottawa contemplates multi-million dollar outlay for indirect research costs
2)      ACST Investigation into indirect research costs
3)      Research Chairs Allocations to be rejigged
4)      President joins legion of recent voices lauding liberal arts

OTTAWA CONTEMPLATES MULTI-MILLION DOLLAR OUTLAY FOR INDIRECT RESEARCH COSTS
Research chairs allocations to be overhauled because of flawed data

Universities may soon get relief from the mounting pressure of indirect
research costs as the federal government is considering the creation of a
program to cover the research-related costs of libraries, plant
maintenance, computing, and administration.

An indirect research costs program on the order of $1-billion, but more
likely in the "hundreds of millions," is among the candidates for support
in Finance minister Paul Martin's next federal budget, sources say.

But a determination must still be made as to whether such support is even
necessary and that will depend largely on the outcome of a study now being
undertaken by the federal Advisory Council on Science & Technology (ACST).

"If the council says it isn't warranted, there's no way we proceed," says
one senior government source.

An indirect research costs program is among alternatives now being examined
as possible new federal outlays in the wake of an anticipated boom in
government revenues as a result of the buoyant economy.

It's widely perceived that Martin will next February again be faced with
flush coffers and actively searching for ways to invest the windfall, much
in the manner that he last year laid an unexpected $900-million on the
Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) to top up its $1-billion endowment
to re-invigorate university labs (see Perspectives, Vol. 3 No. 7).

"He's going to have to dump a lot of money somewhere and one of the
considerations is whether to use the CFI as a vehicle through which to
support indirect research costs," says one source.

"Martin is looking for places to invest," adds another. "He's suggested to
several agencies that they establish something like the CFI or the
millennium scholarship fund, where money can be spent in a good cause."

ACST INVESTIGATION INTO INDIRECT RESEARCH COSTS
Commissioned by cabinet to provide confidential advice on the issue of
indirect research costs, the ACST is consulting with a number of academic
associations, including the Federation of the Humanities & Social Sciences
of Canada (HSSFC), on the need for a new program to ease the financial
burden now faced by universities.

"The government is interested in getting a good examination of the question
(of indirect research costs)," says ACST senior analyst Ken Hart. "To what
extent is this simply a concern on the part of the universities that
they're not able to keep up and to what extent is it actually a specific
problem? So it's an analysis type of exercise."

That analysis will include an assessment of how other nations handle
indirect research costs but it's far too early to say what form the ACST's
final recommendations might take, Hart adds. "They will offer advice but
(it hasn't yet been determined) whether it will be in the form of what
should be done or in the form of how to understand the issue and what might
be done. There's a whole range of possibilities."

Those possibilities will likely rest on resolution of a series of
definitional and jurisdictional issues surrounding the question of indirect
research costs, says former NSERC director general of research grants and
Ottawa consultant Mireille Brochu, who in 1996 conducted a study of
indirect research costs on federal research contracts to universities on
behalf of the Canadian Association of University Research Administrators;
the Association of Universities & Colleges of Canada; and Industry Canada.

Brochu notes the whole notion of indirect research costs is a bit of moving
target, in terms of its definition, scope and actual cost to universities.

Responsibility for indirect research costs at universities has never been
constitutionally articulated, although both the federal and provincial
governments are traditionally viewed as having made contributions through
provincial operating grants and federal transfer payments for
post-secondary education, respectively. It's also often held that the
federal government makes an added contribution in that operating grants
awarded by the nation's granting councils are largely unconditional and can
basically be spent as an institution sees fit.

But as budgets get squeezed, while enrolments and research capacity
increases, the "original formula gets compressed all the time and the
historical rationale is kind of lost. You end up with less money to do
more," Brochu notes.

In her 1996 study, Brochu defined indirect costs as "expenditures
associated with plant operation and maintenance (such as heat and light);
libraries; central computing (or currently, network costs); general
administration; and academic administration."

An exact calculation of the total amount universities spend on indirect
research costs is equally problematic, Brochu adds. In 1997-98, Statistics
Canada estimated that universities and research hospitals undertook
$3.28-billion worth of Research & Development, of which $1.93-billion was
sponsored by government, industry or non-profit agencies. The remaining
$1.35-billion was tagged as outlays for indirect costs and the projected
cost of research time of faculty members.

In the United States, universities and granting departments or agencies
negotiate fixed percentage awards on the order of 35-65% (depending upon
such factors on accounting practices and whether or not the university is a
private or public institution) to cover indirect costs of federal research
grants.

If a similar approach was taken in Canada, that would likely translate into
something on the order of $500-million needed to offset indirect research
costs in Canada's universities, Brochu says. But she stresses the solution
isn't simple and the exact cost has yet to be quantified.

In its presentation to the ACST, the HSSFC urges that an "inclusive
definition of indirect costs" be adopted if a program is created. "To
remain competitive in their fields, university researchers need access to
archival materials, to up-to-date collections of learned journals (in print
or electronic forms) and to recently published books. They need to test
their research by attending conferences and defending their hypotheses,
they need access to electronic data banks that are maintained and updated,
they need the means to disseminate their research. To do all this, they
must rely on a multitude of university services and peoples; they need
physical spaces that are safe and in good repair, and they need the tools
of their trade."

The need is particularly acute in university research libraries, the
Canadian Association of Research Libraries argues in its brief to the ACST.
"The average effective purchasing power (of CARL libraries) has dropped
between 21.6% and 32.7% over the last five years."

Should a program be developed, the HSSFC also contends that tying the
monies to research grants in the manner of the Canada Research Chairs
Program would disadvantage the social sciences and humanities because
they'd once again be the victims of historic underfunding of the Social
Sciences and Humanities Research Council, (SSHRC). "A three year rolling
average per university could include a weighted ratio of 70% for the social
sciences and the humanities and 40% for medical, engineering and natural
sciences. Such an adjustment would ensure that all university researchers
are treated equally."

Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) executive director Jim
Turk also argues an alternative distribution model is needed.

Allocations under the chairs programs exacerbated a trend towards greater
differentiation and specialization among universities, Turk argues. "Unlike
the U.S., where you have everything from Harvard to Bob Jones University,
we don't have that kind of disparity. What this kind of approach does,
which puts a huge amount of money into the system but gives more than half
to 10 universities, is increasingly saying that regional and smaller
institutions are basically going to be teaching institutions without a
serious research element and we're going to concentrate more and more of
the research in the natural and medical sciences and in a handful of 8-10
major research universities."

"We think that's a mistake," Turk adds.

RESEARCH CHAIRS ALLOCATIONS TO BE REJIGGED
Serious flaws in the data used to determine individual university
allocations under the $900-million Canada Research Chairs Program will
result in a redistribution of the 2000 chairs in late August.

Program administrators have also decided they will not allow universities
to use chair monies to offset indirect research costs unless those are
directly attributable to the creation of the research chair.

Under the chairs program, some 2,000 new research positions, including 376
in the social sciences and humanities, will be established in senior and
junior tiers valued at $200,000/year and $100,000/year, respectively.

An allocation scheme unveiled last spring had divvied-up the chairs among
the nation's universities according to each institution's success in recent
granting council competitions, resulting in allocations of 251 chairs for
the University of Toronto, 162 for McGill, 160 for U.B.C., 138 for
Université de Montréal and 118 for Alberta, (see Perspectives, Vol. 3. No.
11).

But program administrators used figures provided by the Canadian
Association of University Business Officers (CAUBO) in making those
allocations and it has since become apparent there were a number of serious
"errors" in the CAUBO numbers, says Denis Croux, acting director of
operations for the chairs program.

In some cases, universities claimed the entire budget of a Network-of
Centres-of-Excellence which it hosted, even though a significant portion of
that network's monies was ultimately dispersed to researchers at other
institutions.

In other instances, flaws occurred because of the manner in which
universities report their income to CAUBO. "Some universities reported two
years income in one, which artificially boosted their number of chairs,"
Croux says.

The program's steering committee -- comprised of executive director Dr.
René Durocher and the presidents of the granting councils and CFI -- has
directed that a recalculation be made according to numbers culled directly
from the councils rather than CAUBO. The new allocations will be announced
in August.

The steering committee has also decided it will not allow individual
universities to use a flat percentage of their chair monies to cover
indirect research costs associated with the position.

Universities will be entitled to use some of the chair monies for indirect
costs like "administration," Croux says. "But that has to be accounted for
on a per chair basis. In other words, the university will have to
demonstrate that those costs are incurred in support of the chair."

The government has been equally steadfast in resisting calls for
alterations in the existing formula for distributing chair monies among the
social, natural and health sciences. That split was based largely on
traditional funding patterns which bias in favour of capital intensive
research in the biomedical and natural sciences, although it did increase
the humanities and social sciences stake to 20% from 12.5% in a bid to
partially redress underfunding of SSHRC.

A distribution model based on the actual share of faculty positions which
the social, natural and health sciences have within academe would radically
alter the allocations to individual universities, Turk notes, citing the
example of similar sized universities like Montreal and York, which are
currently slated to receive 138 and 31 chairs, respectively, rather than 75
and 65 under a model based on actual faculty positions.

The regime is exacerbating the gap between have and have-not universities,
and shifting academic research towards a "corporate model" under which
so-called star scientists are isolated in labs at major research-intensive
institutions while faculty at smaller institutions are increasingly
restricted to teaching duties only, Turk argues. In thus undermining the
link between teaching and research, both universities and students are done
an "enormous disservice."

Turk also notes universities are becoming increasingly concerned that the
chairs program is compromising the traditional autonomy and integrity of
universities by placing university hiring decisions in the hands of the
government via the chairs peer review system.

PRESIDENT JOINS LEGION OF RECENT VOICES LAUDING LIBERAL ARTS
Hot on the heels of recent statements by the Chancellors of Ontario's
universities and the CEOs of high tech firms such as Cisco, Compaq, Xerox
and BCE lauding the value of a liberal arts education, University of
Western Ontario president Dr. Paul Davenport last month delivered a
convocation address at the University of Toronto aimed at dispelling the
proposition that the liberal arts will only be valued for their
contribution to economic earnings in a knowledge-based society.

As citizens, students "will increasingly see the society around them as a
community whose direction they may seek to influence, rather than a fixed
reality to which they must passively adapt. Many will know that a narrow
education focused on a particular entry into the job market will not give
them the intellectual tools and understanding they need to know to become
full-fledged citizen participants in setting society's directions. They
will seek those tools and understanding in the arts, precisely because the
arts are largely separate from the commercial world, a separateness which
provides a platform from which to understand, criticize, and change the
social and economic conventions which hold sway at any time."

"Finally, those future students in schools and universities will know that
they do not need to choose between earning a living in the future and
fulfilling now those real human needs met by the study of the arts. They
can do both," Davenport added.


Editor:
Wayne Kondro is a freelance writer based in Ottawa.  The former Editor of
the "Science Bulletin", an independent newsletter on national S&T policy,
he is currently a regular contributor to such publications as "Science" and
"The Lancet".