Universities to benefit from Sustainable Research Excellence (SRE) funding

The Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research recently released a Guidance Paper on the Sustainable Research Excellence (SRE) initiative, announced in the Government's 2009-10 Budget.

This initiative will make $510 million available over 4 years to support universities in meeting the indirect costs of their Australian Competitive Grant (ACG) research activities.

The new 2010 SRE administrative framework included in the Sustainable Research Excellence (SRE) in Universities 2010 Guidance Paper (available via the link in this article's Resources section) was the result of extensive consultation with the higher education sector.

Under the SRE framework, participation in a trial of Transparent Costing (TC) will be an eligibility requirement for accessing 80% of SRE funds but will not drive 2010 funding allocations. Results of the 2010 trial will, however, inform the design of the final TC framework to be adopted under the SRE program and form the basis of allocation of funding under the Threshold 2 element of SRE in 2011.