What the HE community wants the Accord to address is pretty clear (CMM Tuesday) but the Group of Eight is keen to explain  what it can do for the country

The research university lobby has a series of papers in the works.

The first is out this morning, suggesting, “it is timely to step back and reflect on just what the role of the university is – in particular the role of the nation’s globally competitive research-intensive universities, namely the Go8.”

* innovation as the key to national productivity: “knowledge and human capital creation and dissemination are precisely what universities exist to deliver”

* “when combined with people with skills (knowledge) is the basis for increasing returns to scale”

* human capital: “the more successful Australian universities are at teaching students, the greater the greater the stock of human capital … to advance ideas and knowledge into innovative and productive change”

* critical thinking: skills taught at universities lead to more innovative people who are more productive and civic minded

And the Eight being the Eight the paper has examples of what a splendid job it is doing.