If you’ve been hanging around The Audit for long enough you’ll have seen my assessments of the limited value of some publicly funded academic research. But this post will ignore the quality of the research and focus instead on how much money is spent through the process of competing for grants themselves.
Long ago, the Federal government's main vehicle for public research was government labs (NRC etc.). This approach means little overhead to allocate research funding, but the Feds paid all of the costs, and over time became disappointed with what the labs produced. The Feds moved on to universities.
For more than 45 years, the federal government funding to universities has taken advantage of the provincial funding these institutions already receive for education and research. The Feds' funding is credited with research that produces lots of research knowledge and trained personnel (students) ... across the country.
The application success rate problem is a consequence of this approach: there are multiple independent stakeholders - the Feds, the provinces, the universities, and their quite-independent university faculty. The application churn noted in the post results in a dynamic competition of ideas, and the application load is only a minor inconvenience to the federal funding agencies (their grant evaluation costs are minor compared to the application preparation costs). Meanwhile, the organizations who pay for most of the application preparation costs (the provinces and universities) have so far been unwilling to restrict which professors are allowed to apply for funding.
On a side note, the post has an interesting estimate of costs to apply for CIHR funding - I was wondering where the estimated costs came from. For another view on the costs of applying for research, this paper has estimates of costs to apply for Australian Medical research funding: "The modified lottery: Formalizing the intrinsic randomness of research funding" by Steven De Peuter and Stijn Conix .
The calculation that it costs $96,000 to secure a $100,000 grant is startling. It highlights a hidden "tax" on research. We track similar complaints in the Hansard records from the House of Commons science committee. Witnesses frequently tell MPs that applying for funding has become a full-time job. However, the government’s Main Estimates (the annual spending plan) never account for this lost time. We are effectively paying our smartest people to fill out paperwork instead of doing science.
All this is unfortunately too familiar. The federal government's insistence on tying housing construction initiatives to unrelated environmental and social program compliance has effectively made the core goals unachievable.
The issue is in finding the balance between oversight, something I am sure most people want to have, with expediency and greater efficiency in the granting process.
I love these articles, but jeeze, does nobody today know the meaning of "begging the question"? It is a logic canard we should recognize, oops, recognise.
Well I'll acknowledge that my usage (i.e., it "raises the question") doesn't fit the traditional meaning, but I would argue that it's become common or even dominant. Language changes... :)
Just another case of getting *anything* accomplished in Canada requires fighting your way though bureaucratic quicksand and enduring its interminable parasitic drag just to get get to the starting line.
Long ago, the Federal government's main vehicle for public research was government labs (NRC etc.). This approach means little overhead to allocate research funding, but the Feds paid all of the costs, and over time became disappointed with what the labs produced. The Feds moved on to universities.
For more than 45 years, the federal government funding to universities has taken advantage of the provincial funding these institutions already receive for education and research. The Feds' funding is credited with research that produces lots of research knowledge and trained personnel (students) ... across the country.
The application success rate problem is a consequence of this approach: there are multiple independent stakeholders - the Feds, the provinces, the universities, and their quite-independent university faculty. The application churn noted in the post results in a dynamic competition of ideas, and the application load is only a minor inconvenience to the federal funding agencies (their grant evaluation costs are minor compared to the application preparation costs). Meanwhile, the organizations who pay for most of the application preparation costs (the provinces and universities) have so far been unwilling to restrict which professors are allowed to apply for funding.
On a side note, the post has an interesting estimate of costs to apply for CIHR funding - I was wondering where the estimated costs came from. For another view on the costs of applying for research, this paper has estimates of costs to apply for Australian Medical research funding: "The modified lottery: Formalizing the intrinsic randomness of research funding" by Steven De Peuter and Stijn Conix .
That's an interesting resource.
For my estimates, I used a number of inputs, including this simulation app: https://osi-luebeck.shinyapps.io/GrantInq/
But most of the numbers came from AI models.
The calculation that it costs $96,000 to secure a $100,000 grant is startling. It highlights a hidden "tax" on research. We track similar complaints in the Hansard records from the House of Commons science committee. Witnesses frequently tell MPs that applying for funding has become a full-time job. However, the government’s Main Estimates (the annual spending plan) never account for this lost time. We are effectively paying our smartest people to fill out paperwork instead of doing science.
All this is unfortunately too familiar. The federal government's insistence on tying housing construction initiatives to unrelated environmental and social program compliance has effectively made the core goals unachievable.
https://www.theaudit.ca/p/are-federal-affordable-housing-initiatives
The issue is in finding the balance between oversight, something I am sure most people want to have, with expediency and greater efficiency in the granting process.
Ahhhhh ......
Greater efficiency within the bureaucracy. A singularly unproven concept of the Holy Grail. Actually, not just unproven but very likely impossible.
I love these articles, but jeeze, does nobody today know the meaning of "begging the question"? It is a logic canard we should recognize, oops, recognise.
Well I'll acknowledge that my usage (i.e., it "raises the question") doesn't fit the traditional meaning, but I would argue that it's become common or even dominant. Language changes... :)
Just another case of getting *anything* accomplished in Canada requires fighting your way though bureaucratic quicksand and enduring its interminable parasitic drag just to get get to the starting line.