Managers of R&D Organisations are not Worried about Personnel Shortages
IQ.HSE presents a brief review of the new HSE ISSEK analytical report 'Business Climate in the Russian R&D Sector: Doing Science' (in Russian). In particular, the publication notes the fact that heads of universities and R&D organisations were not worried about shortage of young researchers, despite the persistent trend of ageing research personnel.
The HSE Institute for Statistical Studies and Economics of Knowledge explains this by the actually increased inflow of young people into the R&D sector.
The situation with engineering and support personnel remains more complex. The latter are not covered by the presidential decree on pay raise, and in 2017 there were less than 60 thousand of them employed in Russia (or 8,4% of the total R&D personnel).
No solution has yet been found for retaining engineering and support personnel. The progress with attracting leading international researchers also remains modest, concluded the new ISSEK analytical report 'Business Climate in the Russian R&D Sector: Doing Science' on the basis of a survey of (deputy) heads of 361 Russian R&D organisations and universities.*
The megagrants programme (establishing, and providing further support to laboratories headed by prominent Russian and international scientists) was assessed quite highly (more than 68% of the respondents believed it was important). According to them the project needed scaling, but the respondents weren’t quite sure it would be possible to step it up, among other things because of financial limitations. Also, the interest in the programme was reduced due to a number of organisational and legal issues (visas, work permits, etc.).
Managers did not see good prospects for increasing researchers’ salaries – neither in the immediate, nor in a more distant future. High administrative load remains an unresolved issue hampering researchers’ productivity, such as preparing tender applications, reports, etc. The respondents didn’t expect the situation to significantly improve.
* The project was implemented by HSE (commissioned by the Russian Ministry of Science and Higher Education). It presents an integrated assessment of business climate in the Russian R&D sector using 50 factors grouped into 8 subject areas: human potential, facilities and equipment, information infrastructure, R&D cooperation, funding, R&D results and their commercialisation, interaction with society, and institutional conditions.
Source: IQ.hse.ru