Requ uest for research propossals: Was it w worth the eff ffort? Evalua ating the costts and beneffits of perforrmance baseed funding in n tertiary edu ucation Purposee The TEU U believes it is important to carry out a systematicc evaluation into the cossts and beneffits of perform mance based funding in th he New Zealaand tertiary education syystem (speci fically universities, institutees of technology/polytechnics and wāānanga). A n number of asssertions or hhypotheses have been raiised by TEU m members that require teesting: 1. That additio onal teams off staff have bbeen hired at both tertiary educationn institutionss and in central goveernment agencies in ordeer to collect aand audit the data used in various performancee measures. As a result, the cost of e establishing performancee measures has outweighed any gains fo or the tertiarry education sector in terrms of qualitty teaching, learning, and research h. portfolios and d having thesse assessed by 2. That the reaal cost of stafff completingg evidence p internal aud dit teams, farr outweighs tthe financial rewards ach hieved by terrtiary institutions participatingg in the Perfo ormance Bassed Research h Fund (PBRF F). Furtherm more, that me easures of teaching ‘‘performancce’ which aree projected to be implem mented will b e similarly co ostly in terms of com mpliance, mo oral, human and financiaal resources. use of perforrmance base ed funding ha as created ann on‐going and 3. That the govvernment’s u unsettling environment of constant reviews and restructurin ng across thee tertiary edu ucation n terms of booth the humaan and financcial resourcees needed to o sector, whicch is costly in complete institutional ch hange. mance measurement hass led to a deccrease in mo orale of the pprofessionalss 4. That perform working in tertiary education in New w Zealand, haaving a negattive impact oon quality te eaching, d research. learning, and Backgro ound e New Zealannd governments have moved to instiitute perform mance Over thee past decade, successive based fu unding in thee tertiary edu ucation sectoor. This begaan with the introduction of the Perfo ormance Based Research Fund (PBRF), but since then an additionaal layer of pe erformance ffunding has b been introducced to ‘impro ove’ student outcomes. e by perform ance based ffunding in te ertiary educaation are mixxed, and Internattionally the results borne have led d some counttries to aban ndon such prrogrammes ((See Harnisch h 2011 for ann overview o of US models). The reason ns for abandoning perforrmance base ed funding are often linkked to poorlyy designed d systems which pervert the mission of tertiary e education insstitutions; syystems that ffail to recognisse the diverssity of the secctor; a lack oof ‘buy‐in’ fro om the profe essionals wo rking the secctor; and becausee the systemss often fail to o acknowleddge that a complex set off inputs affecct the final outcomes
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