Project Description

Project aims to respond to major objectives of Georgian R&D strategy defined by the government’s four-point development plan including education reform and creation of knowledge-based society; to strategic development plan of the Ministry of Education and Science [MES] on quality enhancement of education, research, raising innovation potential, capacity building on tech-transfer via strengthening university-industry relations, and internationalization; and to new standards of National Center for Education Quality Enhancement demanding the evidence-based policy for R&D and strategic development plans for research at HEIs.    

Background:

Reforms of Georgian HE system started after Georgia adopted new law on higher education in 2004 transforming the entire soviet-style higher education system into compatible to European model. In 2005 Georgia joined Bologna Process at Bergen Summit starting series of reforms that touched upon multiple aspects of HE, though the least focus was made on the development and internationalization of research.
In 2006 research activities that had mainly been performed at research institutes under the Georgian Academy of Science also fell under the reforms. In 2006-11 all research institutes were subordinated to MES as independent legal entities of public law; since 2011 majority of them merged with different research universities, while others became subordinate to various ministries. Their major source of funding was twofold - state budget covered running costs for institutions and research was funded by National Science Foundation of Georgia on competitive basis.

Merging research institutes with universities in 2011 aimed to integrate research with teaching and strengthen capacity of research-intensive HEIs in Georgia. Currently TSU has 15 research institutes, Georgian Technical University - 12, Ilia State University – 9, and Tbilisi State Medical University - 2.  However, transformation of the soviet-style research system into the European one was mostly marked by formal changes [EPPM, 2008, 2013; Bakradze, 2013; Bregvadze, 2013].

State-of-Art:

Transferring research from Soviet-style academia to universities did not contribute to research performance enhancement at large. Little focus on research development resulted in poor performance of Georgia in various international rankings: e.g. Global Competitive Index assigns 67th place to Georgia among 137 participants in 2017-18. But if looked closely at indicators evaluating performance of science, Georgia ranks 131 for local availability for research and training services, 99 for capacity of innovation, 127 for quality of research institutions, 116 for university-industry collaboration in R&D, and 125 for availability of scientists and engineers.

In respect to R&D, Georgia’s score is also very low (2.2 out of 100) ranking us at 91 out of 127 (Global Innovation Index 2017). According to Scimago Lab data, Georgia’s overall H Index is 135 (ranking Georgia 79 out of 239); but if we look at scientific productivity in different disciplines, we see certain disparity in rankings: Georgia ranks 52 in Physics and Astronomy, 69 in Mathematics, 72 in Social Sciences, 75 in Arts and Humanities and 85 in Computer Sciences (Scimago Georgia Profile 1996-2016).    
These mismatches clearly show that R&D in Georgia is in free-floating mode and needs more strategic planning and development on both, university and state levels. In fact, HE and research are declared as state priorities (Strategy of Socio-Economic Development – “Georgia 2020”, 2014), and the project of Joint Strategy of Education and Science of Georgia underlines need of research capacity development and raising country’s research profile (2017). Certain positive developments have been observed in this respect such as signing association agreement with Horizon 2020, EU's Research and Innovation Programme (European Commission, 2016).

Rationale:  

However, for equal participation of Georgian HEIs in EU framework programs and improvement of research performance, certain measures are to be taken. Firstly, it is vital to improve performance of R&D units at HEIs, strategically plan R&D and work on forecasting future development perspectives. However, this requires existence of research data as well as high quality research management. Unfortunately, institutional research units that would be responsible for data processing, analyzing, research management and strategic forecasting are poorly or not developed at Georgian HEIs, thus, data treatment merely depends on individual free will of university representatives (Lezhava & Amashukeli, 2016). Need for data analysis for identifying and monitoring key performance indicators is underlined in quality assurance guidelines of ENQA (2015). Moreover, Georgia’s Joint Strategy of Education and Research 2017-21 stresses the need for research infrastructure and management development for supporting optimal utilization of resources and enhancing cooperation between academia and industry. Moreover, without proper research management tools it is hard to track overall performance of individual universities, support inter-university or interdisciplinary cooperation, identify priority research areas, attract new generation of PhDs, work on university-industry cooperation and facilitate university spin-offs via knowledge transfer, and overall, create solid ground for exchange of resources, both human and infrastructure on local and international level.  

Therefore, proposed project aims to fill  this gap and focus on capacity development of Georgian HEIs through sharing best practices of the beknown EU universities, staff training and refining their research management and data analysis skills, developing national research management platform, Georgian Research Portal that will help the HEIs optimize their research capacity in various disciplines and set ground for institutional cooperation and extend the visibility of Georgia in international context.