Tag: Research Funding

  • Notes on Research Policy, Here and Abroad

    Notes on Research Policy, Here and Abroad

    Hi all. I thought I would take some time to have a chat about how research policy is evolving in other countries, because I think there are some lessons we need to learn here in Canada.

    One piece of news that struck me this week came from Switzerland, where the federal government is slashing the budget of the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) by 20%. If the Swiss, a technological powerhouse of a nation, with a broad left-right coalition in power and a more or less balanced budget, are cutting back on science like this, then we might all have to re-think the idea that being anti-Science is just a manifestation of right-wing populism. Higher education as a whole has some thinking to do.

    And right now, two countries are in fact re-thinking science quite a bit. In the UK, the new head of UK Research and Innovation (roughly, that country’s One Big Granting Council), has told institutions that they might need to start “doing fewer things but doing them well”, to which the President of Universities UK and vice-chancellor of Manchester Metropolitan University Malcom-Press added that he was “hearing from government is that [they] don’t want to be investing in areas of research where we don’t have the quality and we don’t have the scale.” And, the kicker: “You can’t have hobbyist research that’s unfunded going on in institutions. We can’t afford it.”

    Over to Australia, where a few months ago the government set up a Strategic Examination of Research and Development, which released a discussion paper, held consultations and got feedback (which it published) and has now released six more “issue” papers for consultation which detail government thinking in many different and more detailed ways. If this sounds magical to you, it is because you are from Canada, where the standard practice for policymaking is to do everything behind closed doors and treat stakeholders like mushrooms (in the dark with only fecal matter for company) instead of a place where policy-making is treated as a serious endeavour in which public input and expert advice is welcomed. 

    For today’s purposes however, what matters is not process but policy. The review is seriously considering a number of fairly radical ideas, such as creating a few national “focus areas” for research funding, which would attract higher rates of overhead and requiring institutions to focus their efforts in one of these priority areas via mission-based compacts (which are sort of like Ontario’s Multi-Year Agreements, only they are meaningful) so as to build scale and specialization. 

    Whew.

    One thing that strikes me as odd about both the UK and Australian line of thinking is the idea that institutional specialization matters all that much. While lots of research is done at the level of the individual lab, most “big science” – the stuff people who dream about specialization have in mind when the talk about science – happens in teams which span many institutions, and more often than not across national borders as well. I get the sense that the phenomenon of institutional rankings have fried policy makers’ brains somewhat: they seem to think that the correct way to think about science is at the level of the institution, rather than labs or networks of laboratories. It’s kind of bananas. We can be glad that this kind of thinking has not infected Canadian policy too much because the network concept is more ingrained here.

    Which brings me to news here at home. 

    The rumour out of Ottawa is that in the next few months (still not clear if this is going to be fall 2025 or Spring 2026) there will be an announcement of a new envelope of money for research. But very definitely not inquiry-driven research. No, this is money which the feds intend to spend as part of the increase in “defence” spending which is supposed to rise to 2% of GDP by 2025-2026 and 5% by 2035. So, the kinds of things it will need to go to will be “security”, likely defined relatively generously. It will be for projects in space, protection of critical infrastructure, resiliency, maybe energy production, etc.  I don’t think this is going to be all about STEM and making widgets – there will be at least some room for social science in these areas and maybe humanities, too, though this seems to me a harder pitch to make. It is not clear from what I have heard if this is going to be one big pie or a series of smaller pies, divided up wither by mission or by existing granting council. But the money does seem to be on its way.

    Now before I go any further, I should point out that I have not heard anyone say that these new research envelopes are actually going to contain new money beyond what was spent in 2024-25.  As I pointed out a couple of weeks ago, that would be hard to square with the government’s deficit-fighting commitments.

    In fact, if I had to guess right now, the best-case scenario would be that the Liberals will do this by taking some or all of the 88% of the Budget 2024 research commitment to the tri-councils and push it into these new envelopes (worst-case scenario: they nuke the 88% of the 2024 Budget commitment they haven’t yet spent and claw back money from existing commitments to make these new envelopes). 

    So, obviously no push here for institutional specialization, but where our debate echoes those of the UK and Australia is that all three governments seem to want to shift away from broad-based calls for inquiry driven research and toward more mission-based research in some vaguely defined areas of national priority.  I know this is going to irritate and anger many people, but genuinely I don’t see many politically practical alternatives right now. As I said back here: if defending existing inquiry-driven tri-council budgets is the hill the sector chooses to die on, we’re all going to be in big trouble. 

    No one will forcing individual researchers or institutions to be part of this shift to mission-driven research, but clearly that’s where the money is going to be. So, my advice to VPs Research is: get your ducks in a row on this now. Figure out who in your institution does anything that can even tangentially be referred to as “security-enhancing”. Figure out what kinds of pitches you might want to make.  Start testing your elevator pitches. There will be rewards to first movers in this area.

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  • The Coming Federal Cuts – Part 3: ISED

    The Coming Federal Cuts – Part 3: ISED

    Monday, we looked at the country’s overall financial situation (dire), and yesterday we looked at how cuts of a magnitude of 15% might affect key programs like the Canada Education Savings Program and the Canada Student Financial Assistance Program. Today, we’re going to look at how a 15% cut might affect the Government of Canada’s research subsidies, which in the main are run through the Ministry of innovation, Science and Economic Development (ISED). 

    (I will be speaking about “the tri-councils” as a single funding line; I am aware that the Canadian Institute for Health Research (CIHR) is funded through Health Canada but for this exercise it is easier just to lump them together).

    Let’s start by acknowledging that ISED is a sprawling mess of a department with small programs with very little political protection littered all over the place. I wouldn’t bet the farm on the $12 million “Futurpreneur Canada” making it out of this budget round alive. I also doubt the Universal Broadband Fund is going to continue at $900 million per year. Computers for Schools (sounded great in the 90s, less so now) and Computers for Schools Interns would also be on my endangered list. I suspect that the various regional development funds might be in for an outsized hit as well. All of which is to say that it is possible that the research enterprise – that is, the tri-Councils, the National Research Council (NRC), the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) and all those organizations that get part or all their money through the Strategic Science Fund – might not get hit with a 15% cut. It’s quite possible all these other areas might take an outsized hit and allow the actual science stuff to get off with a lighter cut.

    That said, remember this key point: the budget exercise is not about cutting 15% of funding from where it should theoretically be in three years’ time (the government has a fiscal framework that extends out four or five years). It is about cutting expenditures from a 2024-25 baseline. That means that to get through any previously planned increase in spending, the cuts to existing programs must be more than 15%. 

    This matters for two reasons. First, it is because the government runs its subsidies to electric vehicles manufacturers through ISED. Those subsidies were worth $39M in 2024-25; they were planned to cost $2.1 billion this year and $4.2 billion in 2027-28 (i.e. it’s about half the department’s direct budget spend come two years from now, and about a third of total sci/tech spend if you include the tri-councils). To accommodate that increase while following the letter of the budget reduction request would basically mean requiring the entire department to shut down. That’s probably not happening (though one presumes that Carney’s announcement last week releasing Canadian auto manufacturers from their 20% EV sales target in 2026 might also lead to a reduction in EV subsidies to manufacturers). 

    Second, remember budget 2024? The one where the Liberals promised $1.8 billion in new spending on research and the whole sector cheered with relief? Yeah, well only $75 million went into the budget framework for 2024-25; 87% of that 1.8 billion is backloaded until after spring 2026. So, basically none of it is protected, and it’s all at risk. I wouldn’t be surprised in the least if they just cancelled the whole thing. And then, on top of that, we must worry about what happens to existing programs, and whether they take a 15% hit.

    CIHR transfers about $1.2 billion to Canadian post-secondary institutes each year, while the National Science and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) transfers about $1 billion, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) transfers about $440 million (although a fair bit of that last one includes combined tri-council projects which administratively run through SSHRC, including – if I am not mistaken – funding for the Canada First Research Excellence Fund). CFI is another $550 million a year or so. NRC is about $1.7 billion per year. The Strategic Science Fund is another $900 million or so, closer to a billion if you include base funding for Genome Canada. Canada Research Chairs are another $300 million. Call it $6.2 billion in total. Required savings to get to a 15% cut is therefore just under $1 billion.

    Where to start?

    Ask most researchers at universities what they would prefer, and the answer is likely that they would eliminate everything except the tri-council funding. Ditch CFI, significantly cut NRC, definitely obliterate the Strategic Science Fund – anything, anything, anything but touch tri-Council grants. I understand the preference, but as I noted last week, this is a monumentally detrimental position for the sector to take. Yes, basic research and the existing grant system are the basis of the existing tenure and promotion system, and as such is naturally dear to those in the system, but almost no one in Ottawa thinks that’s what these systems are for. If we’re going to keep research funding afloat, it’s probably going to be through more spending on things like the Strategic Science Fund.

    I have very little insight into the state of official Ottawa’s current thinking on the relative value of these various programs, but I could imagine three basic scenarios that get us to $1 billion in savings.

    Option 1 is a straight 15% cut across the board. Take out $400 million or so from the granting councils, $80 million from CFI, $250 million from NRC, cut the Strategic Science Fund and Genome Canada to the tune of $150 million or so, and lose about 350 Canada Research Chairs. 

    Option 2 would be the spare the professors approach. Now, you probably can’t spare them entirely, because they are such a big proportion of the overall expenditure, but if you jacked up the cuts to CFI, NRC and Strategic Science to say 25%, you could hold the losses to CRCs and the tri-councils to under $100M. I think this is unlikely, but it is a possible scenario.

    Option 3 would be the hammer the tri-councils approach. Because, as I said, I don’t think they are particularly well-liked at Finance/PMO. This is close to the inverse of option 2; zero cuts to NRC and Strategic Science, keep the CFI cut at 15% and take the rest of the necessary money out of the tri-councils. That would mean a cut of about $800 million or about 30% to council funding.

    And remember, all of this is on top of walking back the measures announced in the 2024 Budget. Ugly doesn’t even begin to cover it.

    To be clear: I suspect it is unlikely that the research area will get a cut of 15%, in part because officials will feel bad about doing serious damage to existing budgets after, I suspect, already taking away the Budget 2024 measures. If I had to guess, I would say that the department will probably come down hardest on regional development subsidies. Nevertheless, the scenarios above are possible even if not probable. Universities should start thinking about what they might mean and how they might cope. 

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  • Five Rules for 2025-26 | HESA

    Five Rules for 2025-26 | HESA

    Morning all. 

    It’s been a busy summer at HESA Towers. We’ve been developing Boardwise, our new suite of governance products with our partners at Balsam Advisory, and exploring new ideas on data governance and analytics with our friends at Plaid Analytics. We’ve also been touring the country with the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) Thought Leadership Office and the Business +  Higher Education Roundtable (BHER) to talk about higher education, economic growth and productivity. The “what we heard” document from those sessions will be out in mid-September, and there are several follow-up events scheduled, including a leaders’ summit hosted by RBC later this month. This event will focus mainly on how higher education and business can work together to tackle some of the country’s most pressing challenges, such as clean energy and technology, artificial intelligence, and defence. Further insights from this work will also be explored at the BHER Executive Summit in February 2026.

    And, of course, our own Re: University conference – where we will be presenting some of the most interesting ideas out there to improve and inspire the quality, effectiveness and experience of postsecondary education in Canada – is coming up in late January in Ottawa. (Tickets are going fast – reserve your spot!)

    A couple of other small programming notes: 

    • The State of Post-Secondary Education in Canada 2025 will be released tomorrow. 
    • The World of Higher Educationpodcast will still come out every Thursday, but we’re back to an audio-only format because editing is a hassle and apparently very few of you are videophiles. 
    • The Fifteen will continue to bring you the top global higher education stories every other week. 
    • Next Friday will mark the debut of a new biweekly webinar series, Friday Focus, to be hosted by Tiffany MacLennan, surfacing the most interesting shifts and innovations in Canadian higher education – from AI & technology, cutting-edge programming, and the everchanging student experience – through the voices of those leading the change. We hope you can join us. 
    • Our University Vice Presidents Network (UVPN) is going strong and is scheduled to convene in Victoria in November, Quebec City in February, and then internationally for a May 2026 Study Tour in Germany. 
    • Finally, we are targeting the first week of December for the launch of the World of Higher Education Annual Review 2025, a new year-in-review publication which tries to document the year’s shifts across the whole of our crazy sector, right around the globe, using statistics, stories and strategic planning documents.

    Now, on to the year ahead.

    In most places, I think the hard part for colleges is over.  2025-26 isn’t going to be an easy year, by any means, but the big decisions have mostly been made, future directions have been set and the floor on institutional income has either been reached or is in sight. 

    Universities, on the other hand, are a different story.  They have – not everywhere, but in the main – been more hesitant to act. It’s a conservative sector that is resistant to change, be it financial, organizational or cultural. And the financial problems the sector faces – again, not everywhere but in the main – are going to drag on for quite awhile mainly because international student numbers aren’t bouncing back the way they might have (more on that next week) and because an imminent recession is the opposite of helpful when it comes to provincial finances.

    So, it’s going to be a tough year ahead.  In my mind, I think there are 5 rules for success.

    Rule 1 – Act like Universities are a Means to an End, not an End in Themselves.  Literally the worst thing universities can say right now is “universities are crucial, give us more money”. It’s an utterly tone-deaf approach, even if you give it an “elbows up” spin.  The sector has been saying it for years and it clearly hasn’t worked, so continuing with this approach is the literal definition of insanity. And the reason it doesn’t work is because Canadians (or at least Canadian politicians) simply don’t believe that universities are crucial because they don’t believe that knowledge and science is useful. Rather, they far prefer a Canada where the construction and natural resources industries continue to call the shots (if there is a Deep State in Canada, it is surely comprised of these two sectors and their watercarriers). The case we need to make is not “spend on universities”, it’s “a knowledge-driven Canada is a better Canada”.  And more importantly, it’s not a case institutions can make on their own – they need to make it with lots of other actors, particularly from industry.  Alliances, people. Form alliances.  Downsize your government relations team, build up your community relations efforts.

    Rule 2 – Stop with the Tri-Council Fundamentalism.  Federal budgets for research are going to get hammered in the coming months. This will make a lot of people argue that we should ditch all research funds except the tri-councils because inquiry-driven research is sacred etc. I understand the instinct here because so many institutions make council success a key part of the tenure/promotion process. But it’s a bad instinct. No one in Ottawa cares about your tenure processes. You can argue all you want about how basic research is more cost-efficient in terms of driving long-term discovery, but i) the public likes some short-term wins mixed in with the long-term ones and b) nobody outside universities is buying that one story about NSERC funding Geoffrey Hinton’s AI research 30 year ago as a business case for science. Like, nobody. Get over it. Understand that if there is to be growth in Canadian research funding in future, it’s going to look a lot more like Horizon Europe or the Biden Administration’s Chips and Science Act, both of which were widely hailed as being good for science despite – or perhaps because – they are largely mission-driven rather than inquiry-driven. If this is the hill the community chooses to die on, God help us all. 

    Rule 3 – Focus on what you can control, not what you can’t. Yes, things are bad.  You can spend time complaining about it – government is short-sighted, we’re always getting shafted by the granting councils, etc. – or you can get busy. Fire up your friend-raising and fund-raising. Ramp up your spend/effort on international recruitment (more on this next week). Make a big bang with some new programs that stand out. Go big on one theme. Stand out. Please.

    Rule 4 – Faster Collegiality is a Must. Part of regaining public confidence is going to involve being able to make changes at the institutional level with much more speed and determination than is historically the case. That means being able to deliver on promises and priority in the immediate term, not in some far-off future, to be able to act as an institution and not just as a sack full of cats fighting over research priorities and teaching schedules. The way this normally happens is to concentrate power in the hands of the upper administration. This is how it works in most of Asia, most of the United States, and increasingly in Europe as well (though crucially, senior admin tends to be elected in Europe). But it doesn’t have to be like that. There’s no obvious reason why collegial governance needs to be slow: it’s just custom and practice. I’ve been saying for a while that better, faster governance is key to institutions in rough times and while too few have heeded that advice, it’s never too late to start.

    Rule 5 – Do less, but do it better. Universities are ridiculously strung out. Many forces are at work here, but I will single out two. At a system level, we have governance systems that are great at approving new programs and initiatives but absolutely rotten at pruning them once they have outlived their purpose. Result: institutions do too much, but do it badly, thus leading to enshittifcation. But it works at the level of individual faculty too, since departments tend to hire the biggest keeners in the system, the kind of people who won’t say no to more research, or extra teaching, or whatever. Result: burnout. In a normal organization, a manager would come along and try to make workloads manageable. But since Canadian academia long ago decided that the main purpose of department chairs is to protect staff from unwanted Decanal or Provostial schemes rather than to manage academics’ workloads, there is no one in the system who can actually make the problem go away (high-sounding talk about “wellness” doesn’t do the trick either). So, seriously, do less.

    It’s going to be a hard year (or let’s face it, a hard few years), but if everyone gets the basics right, we can come out of this better and stronger. 

    Good luck everyone. Back to work!

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