David Penny's writing on the problems of New Zealand's universities and research system in 1985 hold up well today.

In 1985, David Penny wrote a 4 part series of articles in the National Business Review. He was not one to put forth an argument without data to support it, nor one to mince words. When reading these pieces, I recognised many of the same problems that I have seen in my time in Aotearoa New Zealand. This includes the one he points out in the cover image above, somehow it is expected that our research system should only do applied research. We have heard that again, and again this year.

My take home message is in his question "Where do we turn for effective leadership?" This is, again in our time, the central question around which all the other pieces depend. It is a question, that I think we need to build a community of research, advocacy, and capability to answer. Let's do that.

Some quotes from the articles written almost 40 years ago:

• New Zealand has tried the option of low research effort and hoping things will be all right. That policy has failed. But it is going to be extremely difficult to get effective action. Business leaders know little science, universities are impoverished, and Government scientists lack incentives. Where do we turn for effective leadership?
• What we need from the Government are not hand-outs, but leadership. The policy followed for the last 40 years had led to continued devaluations as we followed a cheap labour, low skills, strategy. We do not have the option of a rare commodity (for example,oil) leading to a high standards of living despite low R&D. Selecting a strategy of high added value depends upon skilled inputs.
• Finally, the tax laws need to be changed so that capital gains are taxed normally. In the present system it is too easy for companies to play the capital gains, takeover game. It is going to be hard work to go for the high skills strategy, but in the medium and long term it is essential for international competitiveness.
• There is an urgent need for a network of scientific databases and programs. These have been well established for five years in North America. New Zealand is an ideal size for such a network but there are major administrative difficulties here as each Government department and university thinks mainly of its own needs.
• We spend little on research and our living standards are still falling relative to other OECD countries. For 40 years we have lived in the smug belief that things would get better.
• ... sometimes we need to supply local figures to help obtain a world pattern. One obvious example is weather and climatic research. We expect a marked improvement in the world models and prediction in this area of research (even if it will not improve the weather itself!).

Zip archive of David Penny's 1985 articles on the New Zealand universities and research system.