Submission to the Review of Australia’s Research Training System

ATTACHMENT: Submission made 31 August 2015 

This submission covers a wide range of topics within the remit of the review and the research questions prepared for consultation. There are significant gaps in our knowledge about current approaches to research training in Australia, and we hope that by highlighting these issues a more robust evidence approach can be used to improve research training in Australia. Key points are as follows:

• Comparable evidence of core competency outcomes and outputs must be collected from current PhD and other research training programs in Australia.
• Australia already has a robust approach which can facilitate to inclusion of transferable skills into research training, but it could benefit from programs which look as raising awareness, or co-ordinated schemes between higher education institutions and industry.
• The diversity of postgraduate students and the lives of individuals must be consider when facilitating the acquisition of skills, experience and capabilities in research training.
• When determining what stakeholders such as employers need from graduates we must improve our approach to issues like graduate employability in a similar way to how the issue is being tackled for undergraduates and international students.
• CAPA has continuing concerns that changes to the funding of the research training or a push to focus research on industry led initiatives will damage what is currently a system that competes well in a global market.
• More must be done to enable access and inclusion of disadvantaged groups’ particularly indigenous students in research degree.

All submissions will be available on the ACOLA website