Eighty years ago, two future Nobel Prize winners led the push to institute a proper system of research funding for the New Zealand university system. Both Karl Popper (Canterbury) and John Eccles (Otago) only spent a short time in New Zealand, but what they encountered made them equally concerned with the lack of research funding and support. In response, with geologist Robin Allan (Canterbury), chemist Hugh Parton (Canterbury) and mathematician Henry Forder (Auckland), they issued the manifesto Research and the University (1945). This was followed in 1946 by a response focusing on the Humanities (Statement on Research in the Humanities) issued from Canterbury University College. The authors included philosopher Arthur Prior and historian of political thought J.G.A. Pocock, both of whom would go on to have stellar careers internationally.
At a time when questions of research funding for New Zealand universities are, in the face of Marsden and other cuts, under debate it is salutary to jump back eighty years, to the start of proper research funding and consider what we might learn from the past regarding today’s issues and concerns.
The 1945 manifesto began by stating, in agreement with Flexner’s famous book on American, English and German universities, “that research and teaching in the University should be ‘conceived as hovering on the borders of the unknown, conducted, even in the realm of the already ascertained, in the spirit of doubt and enquiry.’” Yet, how often does that truly occur – especially in undergraduate teaching – in the modern 21st-century university? Secondly, they strongly argued for the necessity of the inter-relationship of research and teaching, arguing against any division between the two in the function of the university – or its academics. Thirdly, they argued for the university as “an institution where the spirit of free inquiry is preserved and cultivated.” If preservation and cultivation include sufficient resourcing, then this is certainly not occurring in the 21st century as it should.
To ensure proper research could occur, they stated these seven points were required:
(1)Adequate funding of the universities; (2)sufficient staffing that enables all staff time for serious research; (3)space, apparatus, technical and clerical assistance; (4) greatly increased library facilities and materials; (5) regular sabbatical leave and the ability to attend conferences and congresses both inside and outside New Zealand; (6) monetary assistance for publication as well as support via the establishment of a University Press; and finally, (7) the recognition of research via status and promotion.
In what we can see as a challenge to many of today’s internal and external to the university structures, attitudes and funding systems, they emphasized that “university research should be free. It should be directed merely by the initiative of the individual worker, and by his enthusiasm for his chosen problem.”
The fear – as was indeed soon to occur in the experiences of Popper, Eccles, Prior and Pocock – was that New Zealand was losing too many of its good academics “because it has failed to provide both their material and spiritual conditions for their work” – and they used Rutherford’s decision not to return to New Zealand in 1898 as their example, because he saw no hope of continuing and developing his research here.
As this manifesto was seen to focus on the needs and issues of science research, in response the following year saw the ‘Statement on Research in the Humanities”.
Here was stressed the importance of research in humanities in integrating New Zealand to the wider history and body of knowledge which it forms part of and to which it contributes. That is, like the science-focused manifesto, it argued versus New Zealand isolation – in attitudes, focus or impact. What was required for humanities research was access to documents: “research in the natural and social sciences cannot exist without access to books and periodicals, but the humanities cannot be studied in anything else. Outside written and printed matter, research has no existence; experimentation and ‘practical’ work are negligible or nil.”
Therefore, the reforms necessary for supporting humanities research focus on the ensuring the university libraries should be adequately and consistently expanded [an important point in our current climate of consistent cuts in university library funding and holdings]:
“Bibliographies should be regularly checked and new books should be acquired without too much regard for immediate usefulness. An ever-growing and changing body of knowledge and opinion must be reposited on the shelves with the greatest possible breadth and generosity. In the humanities individual opinion and approach carry greater weight than in other studies, and it must never be supposed that any topic has been exhaustively covered, that any new interpretation is unnecessary or any side issue irrelevant.”
They also argued for the appointment of University Readers (academics given more time for research over teaching) in departments to help build up libraires and drive research; the end of isolation and establishment of in-person contact with other universities – here in New Zealand and overseas – to support and undertake research.
Their conclusion runs just as true almost eighty years on as it did when made in 1946: not only “the number of scholarships available to the arts graduate is even more inadequate than is the case in other faculties…it must be admitted that the humanities badly need more belief in themselves” due to not only “the undernourishment” of humanities research but also a resultant “deep-seated malaise” requiring “a recrudescence of energy and imagination.” As to how this could be achieved, it was admitted that the university cannot bring this about by calling it forth, “but it is our belief that the seeds are already present. However, it will not come until conditions – the resources possessed and the opportunities and facilities offered by the university –permit and encourage it”. As Eccles wrote to Popper later in 1946: “…the Arts pamphlet on research was also remarkable in the honesty with which it faced up to the problem confronting arts research in New Zealand.”
This was not the end of the discussion. In a follow-up report University Reform written by a committee of the CUC Students’ Association, Parton emphasized the wider discussion that there should be no division in funding and support between pure academic research and applied research, quoting from Truscott’s Redbrick University that the Arts faculty is actually the most practical of all “because it studies the big questions and studies them in a non-specialized, non-technical way”. [ In 2025 we need to ask: Does Arts still do this? Is it seen as doing this? Is this valued in New Zealand, within and outside the university?] While Allan expanded research to include “scholarly interpretation and criticism as well as scientific research”; and quoted from philosopher A.N. Whitehead that “it should be the chief aim of a University Professor to exhibit himself in his true character that is, as an ignorant man thinking, actively utilizing his small share of knowledge”.
On the back of all this ferment at CUC and elsewhere came the establishment of the Research Grants Committee and over time the growth of a research culture and expanded library facilities. At CUC the University Policy subcommittee in 1946 recommended that all departments had “sufficiently liberal” staffing that would enable the development of research, and that “research itself must be liberally defined so as to be seen as an instrument of knowledge and teaching”. Furthermore, not only were research experience and research capacity declared important for academic appointments, but there also needed to be “some appointments with a particular view to the framing and carrying out of research policy in all aspects”. This included appointments at Reader level and for research fellowships. The subcommittee also recommended the establishment of a University Research Committee that not only would seek to secure “a measure of coordination of overall research programmes” but also work closely with government, institutional research agencies and private enterprise.
So, what can we learn from the past regarding today’s research funding debates?
Firstly, that the greatest impediment to research is staffing. That is, universities undertaking research need to be properly and adequately staffed so that research is not impeded by excessive demands of teaching. Secondly, the resourcing of facilities – whether laboratories, technology, libraries, documents and archives and clerical support – remains an ongoing impediment to research. As does the limited provision of conference and research travel and sabbaticals. In regard to these, a further issue is the ongoing discrepancies between universities and within universities. The provision of scholarships remains problematic, especially for humanities and social sciences, but also in many areas. Finally, there should be no reason or move to divide research focus, support and funding between pure academic and applied research; nor between humanities and social sciences and other areas of the university. Here the universities need to ensure that in times of imposed scarcity, we do not divide and balkanize between and amongst ourselves.
But perhaps the most important lesson is that a research culture is most successful when it is conducted in a hands-off manner, free of government determinations and influence. There is little need to have panels determine what funding should be made and whether or not it is in ‘the national interest’. But also, there is a wider question as to whether such disproportionate funding selected by committee works against the wider research funding of the universities, within the universities? Imagine if the 2024 Marsden pool of $77.7 million was in fact divided and dispersed between the 8 universities of New Zealand (that is, less than $10 million per university) and within each one earmarked for cross-university research funding and support. This alone would see a greatly expanded research culture develop in a more equitable manner.
What university researchers really need is time, resources and a hands-off attitude (as much within the university as from outside) as to what is pre-determined ‘useful’ or ‘necessary’ or ‘of value’… because as the noted researchers of the past knew and stated, no-one can know ahead of time what might arise from any research – in any area. Research by panel determination (either within a university or outside) creates applications to ‘fit’ a panel; but also, applications that by necessity must make excessive pre-research claims as to outcomes of ‘impact’ and ‘value’.
Therefore, if we really want to have a successful research culture develop and thrive in New Zealand, then Marsden panel funding and the like is not what is required. Rather, we have to return to the basics and ensure underlying systems, researchers and institutions are properly supported. That means we need to increase university staffing; lower class sizes; increase funding for required resources; properly fund our university presses and publications; increase all scholarships across all areas; enable more sabbaticals, full leave, and research trips and conference attendance; and perhaps most importantly, be “hands off’ in terms of what is researched. Of course, that would require government and society trusting universities – and celebrating them as important and necessary elements of a civilized, mature country.
