AUT's research makes big leap

The Auckland University of Technology has increased its research by 62 per cent.

New Zealand’s youngest university, AUT had 729 of its academics rated by the Government's six-yearly audit of university research.

AUT's vice chancellor Derek McCormack said he was “very proud of AUT this round” and says the former polytech is still “making strong contributions in teaching”.

Every eligible academic  presents their research at the end of each funding round of the Performance-Based Research Fund (PBRF). Each evidence portfolio gets graded. Those graded A, B and C’s attract funding for future research.

AUT had the fifth biggest number of evidence portfolios for universities in New Zealand, but other universities that are older and more established than AUT, which is 20 years old, did better in terms of research.

AUT's huge improvement happened because of “several years of hard work and meaningful research by many”, said Mr McCormack.

“I am proud to say that we have achieved a 62 per cent increase in the number of our academics assessed as research active compared with the last round in 2012,” says Mr McCormack in a press release.

He said AUT had increased its number of funded portfolios by 408.7 per cent over 15 years since 2003, and was the largest percentage growth across the university sector.

“In terms of PBRF income, our results will mean that the academic quality component of our PBRF income will increase by 50 per cent or almost $5 million dollars per year.”

More PBRF results can be found here.