William Buxton

The Cost of Saving Money: The Folly of Research Funding Policy in Canada (Part 2 of 2)

By William Buxton

Canada's current research and science and technology policies are a raging success in incenting researchers to focus on "applied" problems, to the point where they hold "meet markets" where they try to link up with corporate partners, who will help them qualify for funding. But the cost is a move away from curiosity-driven research at the academy, and a disincentive for corporations to undertake applied research on their own.

Neither of these consequences is healthy in the long term. In contrast to current policy, I would argue that when the commercial potential of research is recognized, funding at the academy should stop, and responsibility should be assumed by the private sector.

This would reinvigorate the healthy open exchange of ideas in the academy, and at the same time develop a solid foundation of industrial research in Canada (something that is sorely missing, with precious few exceptions).

It's Not About Technology

Current policy appears blind to the real value of the university. Canada needs to be competitive in the new economy, but does anyone seriously believe that the key to this lies exclusively in technology?

Ultimately, technology is a social prosthesis. An understanding of people, the domain of social sciences and the arts, is fundamental to success. Yet, rather than lev-eraging this resource of the university, we are strangling it, and placing the bulk of our resources in the technology disciplines, just like every other jurisdiction in the western world. What a way to compete!

Lose a Good Professor and Gain a Bad Businessman

One of the biggest costs of the commercialization of academic research is the toll that it takes on teaching and research faculty. As research proposals evolve into business plans, academic researchers inevitably ask, "Why not just move into the private sector?"

The more relevant the skills of an academic, the more likely they will make the move. The result is that the university loses those most qualified to teach the skills most needed by industry. One company might benefit, but what is the return compared to the multiplier that would otherwise accrue if that professor taught 10 students a year to carry those skills out into the economy?

This is a bad deal by any accounting method, yet this is precisely what current policy is fostering.

Who Can You Trust?

We have entered an era where the university is confused with a vocational school, or viewed as an incubator for commercial products. Short-sighted policies have led to this. The cost is great.

Consider genetically modified foods, one of the most important and controversial issues confronting every Canadian. To whom can the citizen go to for an objective opinion? Who can be trusted when virtually every university biology department, and even the National Research Council, depends financially on the very companies that want to develop this technology?

By "saving" the taxpayer the expense of funding research, governments have taken away the one source where citizens might have otherwise gotten trustworthy advice. In so doing they have sold short the very people they were elected to serve.

Our universities are a national trust, and need to be treated as such. Perhaps we need fewer of them, and higher standards. But they are a trust, nevertheless. So are our businesses and they need to be healthy in order to generate the wealth that will support the quality of life to which Canadians aspire.

Both have a role to play in the new economy, and there needs to be a strong partnership between the two. But what is the nature of this partnership? As it stands, the answer implicit in current policy is going to leave a sorry legacy for our children. I think that we can do better.

William Buxton is Chief Scientist of Alias/Wavefront Inc, Toronto.