Guest Post: PhDs
A guest post by a reader:
The taxpayer subsidised study for 7355 PhD students in 2023. These are both foreign and domestic students. Because the foreign students pay domestic fees, NZ is considered a cost-effective place to do a PhD.
Breaking down those 7355 (data from the TEC website):
Natural and Physical Sciences 21.5% (n = 1580)
Society and Culture 20.1% (n = 1500)
Engineering and Related Technologies 15.2% (n = 1120)
Health 15.1% (n = 1110)
Management and Commerce 8.0% (n = 590)
Education 7.2% (n = 530)
Creative Arts 4.5% (n = 330)Agriculture 0.95% (n = 70)
Horticulture and Viticulture 0.07% (n = 5)
Forestry 0.14% (n = 10)
Fisheries 0% (n = 0)
Environmental Studies 0.54% (n = 40)And remembering that we mostly live in trade deficit and ultimately debt!
I think the point stands that changing the focus of the Marsden fund is a minor move relative to the huge investment that the taxpayer makes (through the TEC) in social science and humanities research in the tertiary sector, and while those social science and humanities research activities can identify what is wrong with NZ, they rarely create new wealth or foreign earnings that we might spend to fix the challenges we face (e.g. increasing social housing, fixing potholes, building cycle lanes in Westport (ain’t going to happen :)) increasing benefits, getting more doctors or teachers, addressing inequality, getting greater school attendance and achievement, etc.).
We need to earn more money, and while our export economy (which is strongly based on primary sector exports) serves us well, the appallingly low numbers doing PhDs (or studying at the undergraduate level) in ‘Agricultural, Environmental and Related Studies’ must be a much greater concern than minor changes in one research fund.
One also needs to realise that just because we are doing research in one area or another, doesn’t mean that that research is applied and used to inform better practice. We need people that can not only do research, but who can use that to realise material advantage or improvement in NZ. That is how our agricultural and horticultural scientists carry some of the weight of our collective well-being on their shoulders!
The reader makes a good point that the changes to the Marsden Fund should just be the beginning of focusing our research priorities so that they can improve New Zealand.