Defining Quality for Research Training in Australia

The Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering (ATSE) welcomes the release of the Consultation Paper on Defining Quality for Research Training in Australia and is pleased to offer comment on the training of research students at Australia’s universities, especially in the fields of engineering, applied science and the technologies.

ATSE supports the broad measures outlined that will see an improvement in the postgraduate experience. It cautions against a “one-size-fits-all” approach because of the different nature of research and its supervision in different disciplines. For applied disciplines it would recommend the possibility of a furlough in industry during candidature, use of industry co-supervisors, more flexible approaches to intellectual property ownership and inclusion of a highly focused coursework component.

Whilst ATSE is supportive of the Excellence in Research Australia approach as an institutional quality indicator, it believes that in applied fields of research the measurement of the uptake of outcomes of the research by industry is important and a partial determiner of the likelihood of a satisfying research student experience. ATSE would be pleased to provide further advice.