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In addition to providing education, the tertiary education sector has an important role in creating new knowledge through research. In New Zealand, the tertiary education sector is a major part of the overall research sector.

Tertiary education is New Zealand’s largest producer of published research

The majority of research within the tertiary education sector is in universities. Universities made up the largest group of producers of published research in 2002, with 47 percent of indexed scientific papers produced by university researchers. By including all research outputs, not just indexed scientific papers, the proportion produced by the universities increases.

Figure 24: Indexed scientific research publication output by research sector, 2000

Source: National Bibliometric Report 1997–2001

Two-thirds of research from the tertiary education sector is pure basic and strategic

Compared with the business and government sectors, the type of research conducted within the university sector was more directed towards pure basic and strategic research. More than two-thirds (68 percent) of university research expenditure was spent in the pure basic and strategic areas, compared with 53 percent for government and 21 percent for business¹.

Overall research output of the tertiary education sector is growing

The annual reports of TEIs provide information on the research activities undertaken and the research outputs produced in 2002. Information from these reports indicates a 13 percent increase in research output from 14,747 in 1997 to a total of 16,686 university publications and research outputs in 2002. However, there was a drop off in outputs from 2001 to 2002.

Figure 25: University research outputs, 1997–2002

Source: University Annual Reports

Research from the New Zealand tertiary education sector has similar impact to research from other countries

The most common means of analysing the impacts of research is through measuring citation rates². Research publications produced by researchers in universities in 1997 had been cited, on average, 6.1 times by 2001. This rate is similar to international averages, given the journals in which the research papers were published.

Income to the tertiary education sector from research contracts is growing

Research in the tertiary education sector is funded through a combination of internal allocation of TEO funds, a specific funding allocation for research within student funding from Vote: Education (to be incrementally replaced by the PBRF) and external contract funding.

A substantial proportion of funding for research in the tertiary education sector comes from contracts for research. In 2002, this source of funding totalled $234 million, which is just over twice the research funding provided through Vote: Education in the same year ($115 million). The total income from research contracts has increased steadily over the six years to 2002.

Research contract income also makes up a significant proportion of universities’ total income. As a proportion of the total income of universities, contract research income has increased from 11.1 percent in 1997 to 13.1 percent in 2002.

Figure 26: University research contract income, 1997–2002

Research contract income includes government contracts funded out of Vote: Research, Science and Technology. The total value of these contracts in 2002 was $87 million. These represented 37 percent of research contract income for the tertiary education sector.

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• Table of Contents

• The Baseline Picture

• Cross Strategy Indicators

• Raise foundation skills

• Skills for our knowledge society

• Strengthen research and knowledge creation

• Te rautaki mātauranga Māori

• Pacific people’s development and success

• Capability and quality

• Technical and Data Definitions