The Performance-Based Research Fund: research assessment and funding in New Zealand

Abstract

The Performance‐Based Research Fund introduces research assessment and links this with the state funding of institutions of higher education in New Zealand. There has been considerable support from the university sector for this initiative in the belief that it will divert funding from polytechnics and other tertiary education organisations. This sectoral support borrows a thirdway rhetoric of rewarding excellence also used by Government, but becomes problematic at the point where institutional shares are determined. The paper explores how a rhetoric of rewarding excellence in research is subordinated to a new mangerialist thrust for efficiency and greater productivity from academics. The methodology of the Performance‐Based Research Fund is analysed as providing an imperfect local driver for the global phenomenon of new managerialism in higher education.