Posts by Kyle Matthews
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I can't comment too much, not being an academic. But (I'll comment anyway).
1. Talking to a panel chair, he thought that the method of quality assessment was fair if not perfect. People in 'the field' tend to have a fairly good idea of which are the top journals, and which work is having the most impact. Whether that's true in other disciplines, dunno. There was a lot of confusion over the terms 'international', and 'national'. They certainly weren't about 'reach', but about quality/impact. But no, it's not an easy thing to measure.
2. It does? Wouldn't they submit like everyone else, and if they're getting published in, I dunno, Nature, people are going to pay attention? The panels were fairly diverse, and they would bring in outside experts if they were underdone.
3. It's a quality, not quantity assessment. I think that's a strategic call, in that the rewards should be for producing less research, but getting it right. No academic will be tripling their output, they'll be focusing on getting their best research out there and published in the right places.
I think the problem really is, how do you conduct as assessment exercise across a country which looks at how good people's research is, and attributes money as a result? Yes, the PBRF is a bit of a game really, but who has a better system?
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A colleague has dubbed it the medical research reward scheme.
Yes there's some truth in that. There's a multiplier applied to how much money you get. Humanities and Commerce get a multiplier of 1, Sciences get (I think) 2, and Health Sciences get... 4? It's a way of taking into account the relative cost of doing research in the fields.
That being said, I think that's how the money is distributed to institutions, how they deal with it internally is up to them. Coming from one of the institutions with a medical school, there are less complaints here than from up the road :)
I think those are details that need tweaking rather than an indictment on the whole idea. If the multipliers were reduced, the money distribution would be done reasonably.
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one of the problems with the PBRF is that it penalises young researchers for their lack of output.
They have made adjustment for that with the early in career status. They also recognise your PhD as a research output.
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Why?
I mean, it's by no means a perfect exercise, and the UK has recently dumped the exercise on which its based.
But it's achieving its goal of directing funds towards institutions that are doing international quality research, and away from those that aren't.
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It is not the role of government to promote "correct" theology or religious views, any more than it is their role to promote correct views on physics.
Not in law, but hopefully in education we promote some correct views on physics.
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How does everyone pronounce Subaru?
When I was young I only heard "Sue-bar-ru'. Now everyone seems to call it 'Sooba-roo'. Is one more correct from the Japanese?
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Can you put your finger on why? It's not like people don't do that in other ways with their dress, facial expressions or basically any other mode of communication on offer.
1. I don't like the fake element. If we have to pretend to be something different from who we are to get on with someone in society, then we're not doing very well.
2. The kiwi accent is largely liked (or in some places, loved) around the world. Except some people in NZ think it's improper or not good enough. It's just cultural cringe.I don't mind talking differently for different situations, that's sensible. But I do wonder what the Maori half of the conversation must have thought when the 'honky' went back to his friends and suddenly remembered how to talk 'properly'. I suspect insulted might be one reaction.
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The thing about juries is that it's harder to find 12 idiots than one.
Yes. But the selection process for being a judge is slightly more rigorous than the selection process for being a juror, which basically consists of answering mail sent to you and turning up.
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The Performance Based Research Fund and research incentives for tertiary education are not the issue for SIT from the different perspectives of the major protagonists: SIT (and friends of SIT), the Minister, and the Tertiary Education Commission.
The funding changes that have matched the PBRF have (not wrongly I think) had serious impacts upon polytechnics. Previously they used to get EFTS funding, which included a component to pay for research.
Now PBRF is stripping that research component out of the EFTS funding and returning it to institutions that do OK in the research exercise - pretty much universities.
SIT, along with all other polytechs have been quite seriously affected. SIT on top of that has their whole Chch invasion which the government is now sensibly fending off to deal with.
It's really an overload of adverse affects from the crappy funding formula we used to have, to a slightly more sensible funding formula that we now have.
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Now I can't shake the memory. I'm grateful for their awesomely large cup, but I don't want to drink from it any more.
But thank you for spreading that image to the rest of us!