“Top universities were using marriages of convenience with medical research institutes to inflate their research income and prestige and to secure an unfair slice of sought-after block funds for infrastructure, university chief Ross Milbourne said. Professor Milbourne, chairman of the Australian Technology Network of universities, sharply criticised the practice as a ‘rort’ and a ‘rip-off’. But front-rank universities such as Sydney and Melbourne rejected what they said was a misguided assault on the realities of modern, collaborative science, with the potential to set back vital research into health and medicine …” (more)
[Bernard Lane, The Australian Higher Education, 27 May]