Universities shouldn’t wait for government: Acting now on SERD to drive a once‑in‑a‑generation reset

Australia’s research and development system has been interrogated many times before. Reviews have come and gone, each diagnosing familiar problems: fragmentation across portfolios, low business R&D, under‑funded foundational research, and strong discovery research that faces translational challenges. What has been missing is not analysis, but a reform agenda with the confidence and coherence to genuinely reset the system.

The now released final report for the Strategic Examination of Research and Development (SERD) provides a way forward.

Ambitious Australia captures the long‑standing frustrations of the sector and translates them into a bold, system‑level reform package. It proposes new national coordination, sharper prioritisation, re‑worked incentives for industry investment, and renewed attention to the research workforce and infrastructure. Most notably, it does so from within a government commissioned review, framed explicitly as an economic and productivity reform agenda, rather than another plea from the university and research sector for more funding support.

Significantly, key recommendations go well beyond system tuning, connecting to broader government policy objectives, and pointing to changes that could reshape Australian universities and their role in the economy more profoundly than at any point in recent memory.

Core to Ambitious Australia is a clear signal: Australia needs greater focus and scale in its R&D effort. The proposed National Innovation Council and a small number of National Innovation Pillars are designed to concentrate investment, align incentives and reduce the fragmentation that has accumulated over decades.

For universities, this goes well beyond adjusting to new grant programs. SERD explicitly opens the door to research specialisation, relaxing the implicit expectation that every institution should sustain research activity across an ever-expanding spread of fields. If taken seriously, this challenges a deeply embedded institutional model.

Research specialisation is not a technical tweak. It has profound implications for how universities define themselves, how they allocate resources, and how they connect research, teaching and civic impact. Choices about where to focus research effort will shape academic workforce profiles, infrastructure investment, partnerships with industry and government, and the way institutions communicate their mission and value to their students and communities.

It also raises harder questions about the relationship between research and teaching breadth. For decades, Australian universities have largely assumed that comprehensive research coverage underpins comprehensive teaching. SERD suggests a different future, one in which research excellence is deeper but more selective. Navigating that shift will require careful institutional design, there remains a question of whether allowing specialisation will be sufficient in a broader environment that still favours a comprehensive research and teaching approach. 

For all its ambition, SERD collides with a familiar constraint: funding.

The recommendations touch the most politically sensitive levers in the system, such as competitive grant funding, indirect research costs, workforce settings, major research infrastructure and, critically, tax reform through changes to the R&D Tax Incentive. Implementing SERD as a package would be expensive and would require sustained commitment across multiple budget cycles.

In an environment of fiscal constraint, the risk is not that the report is ignored, but that it is selectively adopted. Partial implementation, such as through new coordination without new money, sharper priorities without stronger incentives, or mission language without structural change, are unlikely to lead to the transformational change envisioned by the review’s authors.

This uncertainty leaves universities in a familiar bind: wait for government endorsement and funding clarity or move early and risk misalignment.

For universities, the greater risk now lies in waiting too long beyond the next round of Federal budget announcements.

Ambitious Australia should be read not only as a set of recommendations for government, but as an invitation for universities to lead. Even if funding decisions are staged or contested, the direction of travel is clear. Institutions that begin adapting now will be better positioned to shape implementation and to thrive under multiple possible futures.

There are three areas where universities can act immediately.

SERD puts research focus at the fore of the agenda. The question for universities is whether they approach specialisation defensively or strategically.

Leading institutions are already asking hard questions: Where can we genuinely achieve global leadership? Where do we have the assets, talent, platforms, partners and place‑based advantages to lead? Where is our role to contribute rather than compete? And what enablers are needed to deliver this change?

For greater focus to translate into tangible change will require clear choices that show up in how resources are allocated, how collaboration is prioritised, how the academic workforce evolves over time. As well as how the institution signals its intent internally and externally. This leads to the most common pitfall, making deliberate trade‑offs. Without these choices, specialisation becomes descriptive rather than directive, and transformation remains out of reach.

Universities can start this work now, through structured internal reviews to understand where strengths lie, setting clear research priorities and making sharper investment decisions in the near term. We have previously written about how to craft effective research strategies here. 

SERD places renewed emphasis on lifting business R&D and strengthening collaboration between universities and industry. While the final shape of R&D Tax Incentive reform remains uncertain, the direction is clear: future growth will depend on demand‑led engagement.

Universities can act now by:

• Creating clear “front door” for industry, with relationship‑based and sector-led engagement ready for potential demand growth created through new tax incentives.
• Expanding industry‑embedded PhD pathways and co‑supervision models, regardless of when stipend or program reforms land.
• Removing internal barriers that make it difficult for academics to spend time in industry through changes to workload models, promotion criteria and conflict‑of‑interest processes.

These changes are strategic, cultural and operational. They do not depend entirely on new programs or funding, and they will be valuable regardless of what direction government takes.

Ambitious Australia is framed around national prosperity, economic complexity and long‑term living standards. Universities should lean into that framing, individually and collectively, and make the case for their role in it.

That means positioning change not as “more funding for universities”, but as a core productivity reform, on par with skills, industry policy and energy transition. It means building coalitions with industry, peak bodies and state governments, and being transparent about what universities will do differently in return for system reform. 

Credibility will come from universities demonstrating that they are prepared to contribute and be held accountable for results. Done well, this also reinforces the social licence that is increasingly important for universities.

This is not the first review to diagnose Australia’s R&D challenges. But it is the first in many years to present a coherent blueprint that links research performance directly to national productivity.

Whether government ultimately funds it at the scale required remains an open question. What is clear is that universities do not need to wait to start make changes.

Those that treat it as a strategic moment – to clarify purpose, sharpen focus and re‑engineer how they engage with industry and society – will be best placed no matter what comes next.

Get in touch to discuss how your institution can respond strategically to the SERD agenda.

Connect with Geoff Sjollema and Nick Lovelock on LinkedIn.