Tin Cup

Australian university senior management incentives explained…

Academic paper citation analysis => Research grants => International university ranking => Foreign student income

Oddly, this is a game that can’t be won. The more foreign student income the universities make the less the government gives them.

Even if they are occasionally profitable our universities have an addictive habit of blowing their cash on fancy buildings.

It may all come to a screaming halt when those Asian universities climb up the rankings.

But maybe not because the Chinese, for now at least, still like the idea of an economic beachhead in Australia in the form of a student son or daughter.

It is unexpected, don’t you think, that there is an inverse relationship between foreign student income and useful university innovation?

It all comes back to that academic paper citation analysis which drives university income but also corrals researchers into trendy and over-subscribed areas of research activity.

On the subject, at a recent awards ceremony for the most cited researchers and entities, it was noticeable that the recipients had mostly non-Asian names despite the prevalence of researchers in Australia with Asian names.

Possibly a sign of a less Pavlovian nature?

Sometimes winning is a sign of an inexplicably megalomanic desire to win the tin cup.