Rethink on university research needs a business-like footing

Abstract

In the wake of COVID-19, the GFC and other crises, shell-shocked businesses, employees and governments should be clamouring "This must never happen again!" In this spirit, we write to highlight long-standing structural issues in the planning and support of research by Australian universities that have been on full display with COVID-19. The government has allocated close to $100 million for COVID-19 medical research on top of research billions in previous years. Despite that, we are almost a year into the pandemic and there are few therapies and nil vaccines available; and we rely on techniques of isolation, masks and hand-washing that date to the Spanish Flu pandemic a century ago.