First of all, there is the business model of the university. In Australia (where I’m based) almost all universities are teaching and research ‘liberal arts’ universities, and they are almost all pubic institutions. We have a couple of private universities, but I haven’t really considered them for the purpose of this post. The business model of Australian universities is overwhelmingly based on income from students, through direct fees from overseas students and government funding for Australian students. Even at research-intensive universities that secure the lion’s share of grant funding, those research funds are still a very small proportion of the overall income for the university.

At universities that don’t secure much research funding, it can become an after-thought, an add-on, something that is unusual and therefore not well understood. There can be little or no allowance for research time to actually do the work funded by the grant. To build a research profile, a university without much research funding might need to adjust its central business model, to create time for staff to undertake research.

The economics of research funders

The economics of research funding agencies are a little bit strange. Government and philanthropic funding agencies are legally obliged to give their funds away. They don’t have to give them all away (e.g. to poor or to applications that breach their guidelines). But, by and large, they are in the business of giving money away. That’s not the way that most organisations work.

When you apply, you are trying to convince them to give the money to you. They have to give it to someone, so why not you? In return, you promise to do the work that you describe in your application. There is an understanding (in most cases) that the work involved may change as the project progresses (it is research, after all), and there are generally mechanisms to cope with those changes. At the end, you will generally write a report of what you have done. But the funders aren’t buying a report. They are giving you funding so that you can do something new and interesting. The report is just a by-product.

The prestige economy

Alongside the economics of students and research grants, there is a prestige economy at work. In the normal economy, a dollar is a dollar is a dollar. The same amount of funding is needed to fund a PhD stipend (for example), no matter what the source.

The prestige economy doesn’t work that way. In the prestige economy, some money carries more prestige than other money. Academics can be ‘grantist‘. Funding that is peer-reviewed, that is difficult to get and / or that provides a large amount of money will be seen as more ‘valuable’. Grants from research councils are ‘worth’ more than grants from other funding agencies or direct funding from industry. I did my PhD on crowdfunding for research. This funding was seen as comparatively easy to get (50 – 80% success rate), not peer-reviewed and relatively small amounts. As such, it didn’t carry much prestige at all.

The prestige economy feeds on systems that try to assess the quality of research. It is very difficult (some would say impossible) to compare research across disciplines or even within disciplines. As such, markers of quality are used to make comparisons. One of those markers is amount of funding. Another is source of funding. Even though the dollars from a research council provide the same support for research as the dollars from a crowdfunding campaign, getting a grant from a research council will be seen as a marker of ‘better’ research. It will be seen in a better light when you are being compared to other researchers, such as when applying for a job or promotion.

Abundance economics

In my PhD, I talked about crowdfunding as an example of abundance economics, versus standard (or scarcity) economics. Podcasts and blog posts are a good example of abundance economics. The people creating them are generally giving them away for free. When bloggers and podcasters list their projects on micro-patronage sites like Patreon, they find that about 1% of their readership will contribute to support their blog. Under a scarcity model, that makes no sense. Everything is already available for free. There is no advantage to paying money for them. It turns out that most people who are contributing are saying ‘thank you’. They want to support the blog or podcast to show their appreciation in some small way, and to encourage you to keep going.

Abundance economics is what fuels the development of open-source software, where people are giving their time for free to make or maintain software. While some open-source software is maintained by corporations, a lot of people contribute in their spare time. That is, they have an ‘abundance’ of time, so they put some of it towards this work.

Researchers often feel that they should be working in an abundance model. Their salaries are paid by the government, and the government has often provided the research funding as well, so why shouldn’t their research be treated as a public good, to be given away for free? Why shouldn’t universities work on the same public good model as public libraries? This can bring them into conflict with their universities, who want them to charge the full cost of their research, or to add a premium that represents the value of their expertise.

The economics of New Public Management

Some of the attitude of the university might be driven by the economics of New Public Management. New Public Management is way of managing the public sector to reduce cronyism and corruption. It emphasises transparency, accountability and efficiency. Unfortunately, in most instances, New Public Management has adopted neo-liberal attitudes to efficiency – as much ‘value’ must be extracted from workers as possible. Tasks are allocated theoretical amounts of time, and then those times allocations are whittled down or eliminated.

This attitude towards efficiency manifestly does not hold for research. By definition, research contains an element of risk, an element of the unknown. As such, it is difficult, if not impossible, to allocate time to tasks. How long does it take to think something truly new? Nobody knows. In his article on ‘the curious problem of too much efficiency and not enough waste and failure[JO4] ’ in the public service, Jason Potts argues that, by eliminating waste, eliminates governments have also eliminated “…the ‘good waste’ that is a necessary cost of experimentation…”. I feel that many universities risk doing the same – squeezing out time for reflection, for conversation, for meandering thought and for research that does not end up leading anywhere at all, but is still worth doing for its own sake.

The economics of self

All of this can take a toll on the economics of self. There is a pernicious culture of over-work in universities, driven by prestige on one side and New Public Management on the other. ‘To thine own self be true[JO5] ’ is a difficult mantra to uphold in universities that are focused on prestige and the elimination of time for thought and self-reflection. When the answer to “How much should I publish?” is “Do more” and the answer to ‘Is my work good enough?” is “Do better”, it can be difficult to put limits in place.

Recently, after years of being a university administrator, I gained my first academic position (thank you, Deakin University). Even knowing all this, my immediate response was “How much do I have to publish and how much do I have to win in grants?”. Even when I tell myself that this is not the measure of my worth as an academic, these thoughts creep in.

We do need to put limits in place, though. Our lives outside of the university are too important to sacrifice by working for the university for free, beyond our allotted hours, on weekends and holidays. Champions of wellbeing in academia (e.g. Narelle Lemon[JO6] ) and the slow academic movement (e.g. Agnes Bosanquet [JO7] and Ali Black[JO8] ) have great things to say in this space.

The economics of corruption

Finally, we need to observe the limits that are put in place by the law and by the ethical guidelines that we work within. The good work of Retraction Watch [JO9] has shone a light on those researchers who go too far through doctoring results and falsifying data. The growth of organisations who pretend to publish peer-reviewed research papers is poisoning the well for quality publishing. Questionable research practices such as claiming first authorship from students and others who have done the actual work is crippling the futures of emerging researchers, as well as teaching them that these practices are acceptable in academia. None of this is good for the future of research.

As I said in the opening, I don’t have any solutions. These different economies bring different pressures to bear on academics. It’s important to understand how they play out in your own situation, and to reflect on what effect they have on your own practice.