UGA Research Cited for Lack of Productivity

Over the years, the University of Georgia has been added to various lists for its accomplishments. Students are better and brighter. Research dollars are up. Fund raising is rocking along during the economic downturn.

Accordng to a story in today’s Athens Banner Herald, UGA recently made the top ten in a list that university administrators are dismissing as incomplete and inaccurate. Noted in the Chronicle of Higher Education, the study by Canadian researcher Jeffrey Litwin compares the number of research papers generated with the total amount spent on research. Litwin will present his study at Tuesday’s annual meeting of the Association for Institutional Research.

Along with MIT, Johns Hopkins, Carnegie Mellon and others, UGA researchers were among the least productive, the article said, coming in at number 8 and spending $103,619 per paper. Penn, Harvard and the University of Chicago were the most productive, according to Litwin’s study.

David Lee, UGA’s VP for research, and Provost Jere Morehead told the ABH that the study doesn’t reflect the realities of research on the UGA campus.