Parliamentary Replies
Research in Universities
Name and Constituency of Member of Parliament
Mr Zainudin Nordin, MP for Bishan-Toa Payoh GRC
Question
To ask the Minister for Education since research has been identified as a key pillar of our economic advancement (a) what is the progress of our efforts to promote more research work in our universities; (b) how do the universities measure the success of research work; (c) whether the quality of research and the processes that are used to measure it are comparable to world standards; and (d) as research is a knowledge-intensive and time-demanding process, what is the maximum number of research groups that research fund recipients can belong to.
Response
The Government announced its plan to increase its R&D expenditure from 2.25% of GDP in 2004 to 3% by 2010.
As part of this plan, MOE’s Academic Research Fund (AcRF) to support research in our universities was nearly tripled to a total sum of about $1.4B for five years starting from FY2006 when compared to the preceding same period.
From this, MOE sets aside $250M for the establishment of Research Centres of Excellence (RCEs) at our universities to fund programs that will generate research of global impact. RCEs are co-funded by NRF, which provides another $500M, making a total of $750M.
Our universities have geared up their research activities and quality, in tandem with the increased funding. We have already seen some promising indicators of progress:
- Number of postgraduate research students funded by the AcRF currently stands at 4,676, a 13% increase from the 4,147 in 2006 and 65% that in 2001.
- Number of projects funded increased from 30 in 2006 to 53 in 2007, representing an increase in funding from $24M to $42M.
- Three RCEs have been approved over the past 2 years. One such RCE is the Centre for Quantum Technology at NUS, where a team of 3 researchers recently won the prestigious 2008 National Science Award for their outstanding theoretical and experimental studies in the field of quantum cryptography.
- NUS and NTU have improved their performance on the research indicators used by the Times Higher Education Supplement (THES). In terms of citations per faculty member, NUS has moved up in rank from the 115th - 122nd band in 2006, to the 61st - 67th rank band in 2007. NTU too has moved up about 40 places, and was among the 125th to 130th universities in 2007.
In view of these efforts, our universities are gradually climbing up in terms of international research benchmarks.
Our universities adopt internationally-used indicators like those employed by the THES and the Shanghai Jiao Tong University’s Academic Ranking of World Universities. Besides the number of citations per faculty mentioned earlier, other indicators, like the number of high quality publications and the number of patents filed and granted, are used to measure their progress.
Beyond quantitative measures, the MOE and the universities rely on qualitative assessments of experts and international academic leaders.
For example, the Academic Research Council (ARC) was formed in June 2006 and is chaired by Dr Robert Brown, President of Boston University and former Provost of MIT. The Council has been instrumental in helping MOE shape and foster a strong research culture in our universities, which has grown from strength to strength.
MOE does not cap the number of research groups that research fund recipients can belong to. However, when assessing research proposals for funding, expert and evaluation panels do take into account the ability of the researcher to provide the level of commitment needed for the success of the project.