Flinders U will increase research spending by $100m over five years, with the money coming from its own resources. Vice Chancellor Colin Stirling announced the investment to staff yesterday. It complements a further projected $100m generated by growth in student places, to support teaching specialist positions created as part of management’s academic staff restructure.

The research funds will go to “areas of existing strength and future strategic importance”, supporting “enhanced infrastructure,” seed funding and a “significant increase” in PhD scholarships.

This is a big return on a big investment in pain and planning, flowing from a comprehensive restructure of university operations and academic workforce changes, which created new jobs but also abolished an unreleased number of existing ones. The loss of existing jobs held by specific staff members in particular was fiercely opposed by the National Tertiary Education Union.

That Professor Stirling now points to substantial saved sums and increased earnings going to core university business will not ease the understandable unhappiness of people whose jobs are gone or changed in ways they do not like. But it does demonstrates why he did it.

All three public universities in South Australia have big change plans underway (CMM March 5). As of this morning on deliverables being delivered, Flinders U is firstest with the mostest.