To understand static and slipping HASS research performance look where universities don’t invest

There’s more than methodology in explaining the decline in humanities and social science research ratings, identified by Frank Larkins (CMM May 1 and CMM May 2). “There’s been a continuing running down of research capacity in the humanities, and the primary culprits are the universities themselves,” says a well-informed observer of Excellence in Research for Australia outcomes, from start to present.

Universities are investing where the returns are – in biomedicine and engineering and moving money out of the humanities, the learned reader remarks. The absence of investment shows up in an emphasis on undergraduate programmes that put students in seats but don’t foster the next generation of senior scholars and in the way unis are not creating intellectual infrastructure, “how many HASS-based research institutes have universities — or, for that matter, the ARC, funded in recent years, the LR laments.

“It’s due to crippling capacity not an absence of ability.”