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Research benchmarking results released amid calls for a review of the system
Australia’s universities are celebrating their standing against an international benchmark but not all are happy with the overarching excellence in research for Australia (ERA) reports.
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Looking at the latest report and how well some Universities with smaller research outputs score in some areas compared to bigger, research intensive universities, where we all know the strength in the same areas is substantially better. This can only raise eyebrows and tells the story of how easy it is to game this system when the research output is not too big. Anyone knows that re-coding of weaker research outputs in areas that are unlikely to meet the volume threshold for ERA reporting is common place. It is an easier exercise in Universities with less research outputs who generally look better than bigger universities in ERA but somehow no so well on international rankings. The end result is a costly exercise that does not at all tell the story as to where quality truly is in Australian Universities