Universities must resist bending their missions to the priorities of overbearing funders, Times Higher Education’s Global Sustainable Development Congress has heard.
Ethicist Puleng LenkaBula said funding with strings attached was the “elephant in the room” for science innovation. “Financing for research and innovation must…be free of conditionalities that disable the researchers from pursuing the questions they want to undertake,” said LenkaBula, vice-chancellor of the University of South Africa (Unisa).
“If we only align our research to what the funders prescribe, we will forget the mission. This is [something that] we often are shy to speak about. Who determines the research and…innovation agendas? How do we ensure that [they] are responsive, not prescribed?”
Summer Xia, Indonesian country director with the British Council, said funders increasingly wanted to know whether the research they backed was “implementable, partnership-ready and relevant to public priorities”. He cited Indonesia’s National Research and Innovation Agency, which was orienting its funding around “strategic issues” like food, energy and health.
The UK’s International Science Partnership Fund was arranged around the four “major themes” of planet, health, technology and talent. “We are all on the same page,” Xia said. “That…is a clear message to the universities on how they should orient their research in order to increase their chances of securing funding.”
