The uni-industry fund to generate graduate jobs could be more trouble for some than it’s worth

The National Priorities and Industry Linkage Fund will allocate block grants to universities on the basis of work with industry to produce “job ready graduates”.

A discussion paper on how it could work has had mixed reviews, largely due to the complexity of funding models (CMM, November 4 and November 9). But while endorsing the flexibility of performance criteria. Science and Technology Australia, raises a fundamental question – whether the funding will be worth the effort for all.

“Considering the effort in time and resources required to collect data and report on it extensively, the costs of this administration and new reporting mechanisms could potentially cancel out the funding income meant to enable deeper industry connection,” STA suggests.

In a response to the discussion paper, STA also questions some of the proposed metrics; “it is unclear what measurement would be used to determine whether a graduate is deemed ‘job ready’ ”

STA also suggests the timing is not great to measure universities hiring staff from industry. “Given the large-scale job losses and hiring freezes in place, the new hiring capacity of universities is likely to be very limited in coming years.”

And it points to a problem with increasing HDR students in internships/placements in the first 18 months of study. “In rapidly advancing STEM disciplines, a few months away from core research programs might mean a candidate’s cutting-edge research has been superseded.”