(3 Nov 2025) In the world of libraries, every dollar matters. As budgets tighten and the demand for new services and resources increases, resource allocation increasingly becomes a complex and high-stakes puzzle. This is the question that keeps administrators up at night: Which projects will deliver the greatest return on investment for our patrons, and how…
(25 Apr 2025) A crowdsourced database is helping researchers at the University of Kansas and other institutions in the U.S. make sense of contradictory information put out by news agencies and the National Science Foundation after the federal government began canceling N.S.F. research grants last week. The public database, compiled by Noam Ross, executive director of…
(4 Apr 2025) China is perhaps the world’s new science superpower in terms of gross spending on research and development, a new Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) report reveals. Meanwhile, research is under enormous pressure in two other research giants, America and Europe, says Sir Peter Gluckman, president of the International Science…
(20 Mar 2025) The Tertiary Education Commission [of New Zealand] has indicated some tertiary institutions could face funding cuts next year. The commission’s annual guidance to institutions said they should not assume their funding would increase or even be maintained next year. “Total funding available for Vote Tertiary Education will be limited and we…
(10 Nov 2023) Times are tight, for local councils as much as anyone, so it’s not surprising they’re running a ruler over all their services. That includes libraries. From Auckland’s Wayne Brown suggesting they could be staffed by volunteers; to Christchurch’s Phil Mauger saying last month that community libraries were just “buildings with some books in them”…
(7 Apr 2022) An analysis by the OECD shows governments have shrunk their budgets for research in 2021, one year after the COVID-19 pandemic forced them to boost public expenditure on science. After a significant 15% growth in real terms in 2020, which was largely focused on health, government R&D budgets for the entire OECD…
(6 Oct 2020) From ALIA: Tonight’s federal budget, as anticipated, provided an unprecedented level of government spending aimed at jobs and recovery. By putting money into businesses and cash into people’s pockets, the government is banking on Australia emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic in better shape than other national economies. While there remain…
(6 September 2017) Australia’s strong global university rankings face growing competition from a rising Chinese university system powered by Government investment, highlighting the dangers of a proposed $2.8 billion cut to university funding. The rankings influence where international students choose to study – and our strong rankings in recent years have helped to generate a…
(31 May 2017) A new study has found that the federal government’s ‘wilful neglect’ of Australia’s national libraries, galleries and museums is putting the nation’s shared history and heritage at risk, particularly in regional areas, reports the Canberra Times. The report by Community and Public Sector Union researchers Kristin van Barneveld and Osmond Chiu, which…
(26 April 2017, Kuala Lumpur) An international expert in socio-economic development in Southeast Asia says Malaysia shouldn’t be cutting down on the budget for education, especially since neighbouring countries are pumping more resources into education. Speaking to FMT, Prof Patrick Ziegenhain, a visiting professor at Universiti Malaya’s (UM) Asia-Europe Institute, noted that Indonesia and Philippines…