National Survey of Research Commercialisation - Australian ...

RESEARCH EXPENDITURE
COMMERCIAL ACTIVIT Y
The investment by government and from private sector sources that supports
expenditures on research by universities and research institutes lays the foundation for
the discoveries that are the source of the commercial activities examined in this report.
The survey sought information about the expenditures made by institutions in Year 2000
in support of their research activities. Information was sought for:
total research expenditures — funded from all sources, including Commonwealth,
state and local government, industry, foundations and other non-profit organisations;
research expenditures from Commonwealth government sources;
research expenditures from state and local government sources; and
research expenditures from industry sources — funded by for-profit corporations.
Institutions were asked to report information about research expenditure according
to the reporting guidelines for the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) survey of
research and experimental development. The ABS survey is conducted in accordance
with guidelines promulgated by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and
Development and forms the basis of international comparisons of R&D expenditure for
higher education (HERD), government research organisations (GOVERD) and business
organisations (BERD).
UNIVERSITIES
In Year 2000, total research expenditure within the higher education sector amounted to
$2,775 million. The universities that responded to the survey accounted for 97% of this
expenditure ($2,703 million) 4 .
Table 2:
Higher education — research expenditure by source of funds, Year 2000 ($’000) a
National Competitive
Research Grants
Other Australian Sources
Total
Commonwealth
Schemes
Non
Commonwealth
Schemes
State and Local
Government
Other
Commonwealth
Government
Business
Enterprises
General
University Funds b
Other
Overseas
a
b
483,416 12,065 87,859 166,504 136,221 1,745,693 82,154 60,652 2,774,564
Source: Research Expenditure, 2000: Selected Higher Education Statistics (Department of Education, Science and Training).
General University Funds includes operating grants and block grants.
4
Due to inconsistencies in reporting by universities, research expenditure data for 2000 for individual
universities and for the higher education sector as a whole were sourced from the Commonwealth
Department of Education, Science and Training.
23