In a Grattan report released last year, I argued that research spending was increasing rapidly, with profits on teaching supporting that growth.

The latest ABS statistics on research spending, released every two years, suggest that this trend might be moderating. Although I have not had time to update the complicated analysis we did to estimate the contributing of teaching revenues to research, the long boom in research spending has stalled. After double-digit real growth rates between 2002 and 2012, from 2012 to 2014 there was only 1% real growth, to $10.1 billion (see chart below).

As overall university expenditure has not stopped growing in this time period, research expenditure as a share of all university expenditure dropped from the record 41% in 2012 to 39% in 2014 (see chart below).

Closer examination of the ABS figures by expenditure type shows that one of the reasons for the moderation in research growth is that capital expenditure dropped by $200 million between 2012 and 2014, but 2012 was an unusually high year for capital expenditure. The ABS records capital expenditure in the year in which it occurs, which means that big projects can skew the results for particular years. That $200 million drop accounts for about 0.7% of the drop in the research share of university expenditure.

Still, it does appear that there may be at least a pause in the trend towards research consuming an ever-larger share of university resources. A small decline in research only staff and a small increase in teaching only staff would also support this conclusion. Whether this moderation is just a pause through a period of Commonwealth Budget constraint and a less lucrative international market, or a more lasting slight re-ordering of university priorities, remains to be seen.