Proposed changes to Australian Research Council (ARC) funding schemes could leave junior academics in a catch-22 situation, where they cannot obtain grants without employment and cannot obtain employment without grants, it has been warned.

Cuts to grant durations, and rules around whether recipients can draw living wages from their grants, could also stop early career researchers (ECRs) getting a start in academia, many fear.

The concerns stem from a comprehensive overhaul of grant schemes recommended by the ARC board. Its proposals would reduce the current suite of 13 ARC schemes to six, while increasing the number of individual grants on offer.

This would be achieved by restricting most grants to two years¡¯ length and slashing the availability of fellowships covering researchers¡¯ wages. These fellowships can be lucrative. The current Australian Laureate Fellowships, for example, are worth about seven times as much as standard project grants and go to established researchers with long track records.

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Under the ARC board¡¯s proposals, most stand-alone fellowships would be replaced by ¡°embedded fellowships¡± funded through other grant schemes and capped at two years. ¡°Traditional four-year fellowships concentrate a significant amount of funds on a small number of individual researchers,¡± a explains.

Observers fear this could inadvertently deny many ECRs a toehold in academia because current fellowship schemes such as the Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (Decra) and the mid-career Future Fellowships are available to researchers without positions at universities.

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This could change under the proposals. The discussion paper implies that recipients of embedded fellowships must already be in ¡°the university workforce¡± ¨C suggesting that ECRs must obtain employment in the sector before gaining eligibility for ARC grants.

That is an ¡°unrealistic¡± expectation, according to Sharath Sriram, president of . ¡°The assumption is all those who apply are already¡­in academic roles. That might have been true in the 1990s. It¡¯s not the case anymore.

¡°There¡¯s no stability of employment for people until they are six, seven years out of their PhDs. Universities often use success in grants and fellowships to determine who to employ.¡±

A researcher who monitors grant schemes,?using the social media handle ¡°¡±, was unconvinced that the proposals would improve opportunities for ECRs.

They said changes to fellowship schemes needed to avoid closing ¡°pathways¡± for young researchers and leaving them ¡°overshadowed by the established group leaders¡±.

ARC Board chair Peter Shergold acknowledged the fellowship changes as one of the ¡°stings in the tail¡± of his proposals, but said a primary goal of his reforms was ¡°contributing to the development of the next generation of researchers¡±.

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¡°The role of Laureates will be more clearly defined as leading and mentoring groups of earlier stage researchers,¡± he told the recent Universities Australia conference.

Higher education researcher Peter Bentley said the sheer complexity and competitiveness of ARC schemes, with success rates generally below 20 per cent, meant that unemployed ECRs had little chance of securing grants anyway, because people generally needed help from university research offices to write successful grant applications.

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Bentley, policy adviser to the Innovative Research Universities, said the removal of Decras and Future Fellowships could broaden opportunities for novice academics to work as postdoctoral fellows in large research teams. The ARC Board proposals require that ECRs get at least one of the two embedded fellowships in each project, he pointed out.

But he questioned whether two-year grants would be long enough to provide career security, particularly since government policies to reduce international enrolments had left universities with less spare cash to employ ECRs whose embedded fellowships had expired.

¡°How do we manage that transition out of a research grant-based role into an ongoing role? Ultimately, if people don¡¯t have job security, they can¡¯t pursue risky research.¡±

Sriram said current rules banned chief investigators drawing salaries out of ARC research project grants. This disadvantaged ECRs, who could either be hired to undertake the research or gain recognition by being ¡°named¡± as investigators ¨C but not both.

He said this problem could be overcome if ECRs were designated ¡°associate investigators¡± who could both be named and earn salaries.

Embedding fellowships in the ARC Board¡¯s proposed ¡°Breakthrough¡± grant scheme, which is designed for both experienced and inexperienced researchers and offers funding of up to five years, could also overcome the ¡°duration¡± problem. ¡°As they get into the detail of implementation, these [issues] can be addressed,¡± Sriram said.

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Shergold has stressed that the proposals are at a ¡°preliminary¡± stage. The discussion paper seeks feedback on ¡°unintended consequences or significant risks¡± in the proposals, with responses due by 13 April.

john.ross@timeshighereducation.com