One for the money

For some mysterious reason, an extraordinary amount of paper crosses my desk … and at least some of it is actually quite interesting.  A case in point is a recent report prepared by the Carleton University Research Office (CURO) which provides statistics on the number of successful research grant applications, and the dollar value of those grants, broken down by Faculty and academic unit.  The period surveyed begins in 2008 and continues through to August of this year.  The results are quite intriguing, and should be a source of some considerable pride to all those in Arts and Social Sciences.

During that time FASS has apparently received some 366 grants, totaling an impressive $56,897,577.  That’s a lot of change!  And when you consider that much of that is not being spent on expensive labs and equipment, but rather on supporting student assistants and for travel, it is even more amazing that our dollar totals are not all that far behind those of the Faculties of Science and of Engineering & Design.  I was certainly surprised … pleasantly, of course!

It is also interesting to look at the breakdown by individual unit.  The vast majority of the successes may be found on the social sciences side of FASS – indeed roughly 75% of the grants and a much higher percentage of the dollars.  I suppose that this might have been predicted, as social science research often has greater direct costs, and some of this will have been for labs and other facilities in units like Psychology and Geography.  But the paucity of both grants and dollars in some of the traditional humanities disciplines is striking, despite the fact that English attracted almost $1 million, and the School for Studies in Art and Culture almost $3 million.  But why should there be such a significant imbalance?

I shall expect a flurry of responses offering possible explanations, but the one that comes most immediately to my own mind is the claim made by many “arts” faculty members that their research simply doesn’t require money.  And to some extent that is indeed true!  I can think for example of some of our most distinguished scholars, in departments like Philosophy and History, who publish books and articles by the dozen but whose CVs suggest that they have received little or no financial support for this work … presumably because they didn’t need it, and hence never applied.  Indeed I remember a former colleague at another institution, a professor of philosophy, who frequently opined that all she needed for her research was a pencil, some paper, and time to think.

It’s one of those statements to which you want to reply, “Yes, but …”.  For a long time it has been taken for granted in the natural sciences that faculty members have some sort of obligation to support their graduate students, which is not at all the case in the humanities … and of course there is the difference that in the natural sciences graduate students and post-docs tend to work on the faculty member’s research projects, not projects of their own.  But increasingly we see this model spreading to other disciplines, and being reflected in grant applications to SSHRC.  I worry that a day may come when only those faculty members who can support their graduate students financially will be likely to have any, although I don’t believe that the “tipping point” in that regard will happen anytime soon.  But we do seem to be heading in that general direction.  Furthermore, some grants actually provide time for research, in the form of release from other duties: the Killam fellowships, for example.  And it is already the case that those with research grants find it much easier to attend international conferences, and to accept invitations to collaborate, than those who don’t, for the simple reason that they have a source of funding to cover their substantial travel costs.

Readers of these weekly musings will know that I am not a big fan of “metrics”, which often distort reality or at a minimum require very careful interpretation.  But in taking this view I am probably consigned to a small minority, and I remember the research director for the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO) boasting that his organization tracked the performance of Ontario universities in some 160 different categories.  From one perspective we can and are being judged by statistics such as the number of research grants received per faculty member, and this also drives the league tables in which universities around the planet are ranked against one another.  Those with Faculties of Medicine will invariably be placed higher in such lists, since medical research tends to attract more funding and hence produces more papers.

Where all of this will go remains to be seen.  But for the moment I shall derive considerable comfort from the knowledge that the social scientists in our midst are doing so exceptionally well, along with a handful of “humanities” colleagues.  Our collective track record is not at all shabby.  The figures demonstrate that we are very much a “research intensive” Faculty, and I hope that our successes in external grant competitions will continue to grow in the years ahead.  We can certainly make good use of the money!