My perceptions of research capacity in Aussie Unis is WRONG

All the Australian Reserach Council (ARC) grant results have just been announced... and I'm seeing a bunch of congratulations (well deserved - given the low low acceptance rate of grant applications) being sent around at QUT in my faculty (Science and Technology).

However, when I looked at the statistics published by the ARC about grants given per institution, I had to rethink my rather uninformed opinions about which unversities are major players in research.

The first thing I noticed was that in Discovery Grants (for "pure" research) - QUT got 19, whereas Uni of Queensland got 96... more than 5 times as many. Now I'd always thought of UQ as a more research-oriented Uni, and perhaps somewhat bigger - but five times is a lot. I guess my wariness of too much pride in my alma mater had led me to talk up the relative merits of QUT, which I was so opposed to as a student.

Then I examined the other big winners: Uni of Melbourne - 107, Uni of Sydney - 102, at the top of the table, as expected. But another preconception that shattered was that of Monash Uni as a second-rate research institution. They come in with the 3rd highest total of 93 discovery grants, a whisker ahead of ANU on 92.

Now of course the number of Discovery grants is not the be-all and end-all of research funding, and the size of the grants when added up will probably produce a different leader board... but it is indicative of research capacity.