Waikato Uni boasts world-class research

12 April 2013

Waikato Uni boasts world-class research in Economics, Marketing and Tourism

Waikato Management School at the University of Waikato boasts the country’s highest concentration of world-class researchers in Economics, and Marketing and Tourism.

Dean of Waikato Management School, Professor Frank Scrimgeour, says at least 60% of the academic staff in both these programmes are been rated as either world class (‘A’ grade) or producing research of national and international significance (‘B’ grade) under the Performance Based Research Fund (PBRF).

Both programmes have shown significant increases in the quality of their research since the last evaluation in 2006. The Economics programme now has the second largest concentration of A grade researchers in the University and the Marketing and Tourism programme has shown the strongest growth in research quality of any such programme in the country over the past decade.

The School’s Management, Human Resources and Industrial Relations programme was closely ranked with the country’s other top universities and more than 50% of its staff had been rated as producing research of national and international significance.

Meanwhile, University of Waikato Vice-Chancellor Professor Roy Crawford says over the past decade the number of ‘A’ and ‘B’ researchers as a proportion of all academic staff across the university has risen from a third to more than a half at 54%.

“Ninety per cent of the University’s academic staff are research-active,” Professor Crawford says. “Students can be confident that classes at Waikato University are underpinned by internationally-benchmarked, research-informed teaching, and in particular our postgraduate students have direct access to top national and international researchers,” he says.

“We put ourselves on the line publicly to say that nearly half of our PBRF-eligible staff would achieve ‘A’ or ‘B’ scores,” says Professor Crawford, “and we have more than achieved that goal. This is strong evidence that we are building for the future.”

He says the PBRF research quality evaluation has two purposes:
• To ensure the University’s teaching is “research-informed” as its charter requires, and
• To determine how the TEC (Tertiary Education Commission) distributes the PBRF contestable funding pool.

The PBRF is managed by the TEC and the size of the PBRF funding pool is determined by the Government in its annual Budget. In Budget 2012, the Government announced the PBRF pool would be boosted by $100 million over four years to bring the fund to $300 million per annum in 2016.

Waikato University currently receives about $15 million in annual PBRF funding, of which $9 million is generated by the quality evaluation of its research.

Read more information about the University of Waikato’s PBRF results.

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