Policy-maker interviewees in our study identified several ways in which they believed closer connections between teaching and research could be beneficial for their universities, for staff and for students.

Benefits to the university
From the perspective of Australian university policy-makers, benefits of the TRN to the institution may include:

• enhancement of the quality of teaching resulting from closer links between teaching and research;
• expanded options for funded grant opportunities. Academic staff are no longer restricted to Australian Research Council (ARC) or National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) grants for they may also be eligible for Australian Learning and Teaching Council (ALTC) grants if they are able to emphasise the benefits of teaching-research linkages for student learning;
• raising of the status of learning and teaching in the university as a result of closer ties between research and teaching;
• marketing advantages – some policy-makers believed they would be more likely to capture the ‘high achieving matriculants’ if they were able to market their undergraduate programs/degrees as having a strong research base;
• attracting Honours and PhD students as a result of their connections with research in the undergraduate years.

The following statement captures the views of many policy-maker interviewees when asked whether they felt there were benefits to be gained from forging closer links between research and teaching in their universities:

Yes, there is a definite potential. I’m not saying we’re achieving it at the moment but I think that’s why we need to do more. 

Benefits to the university through benefits to staff
Policy-makers commented that the TRN could be beneficial to the university through its benefits to academic staff and their careers. For example, the TRN:

• expands and enhances staff career options as academics may pursue a career that includes a focus on both research and teaching;
• improves promotion prospects, as long as the university’s promotion policy recognises and rewards the TRN.
• provides staff with opportunities to learn from their students’ inquiry. Staff research may be enriched and shaped by their students’ involvement in research-based learning activities. As one policy-maker commented:

…suddenly someone [a student] will find a left field sort of solution to something and I think that’s terrific for staff to remember, that there are different ways of seeing things.
 
…you’re actually then on a journey together and it doesn’t take long for the students to get into areas that you haven’t got into yourself…they have ways of seeing things which you don’t. Which is where the benefit to academics comes in.

• motivates students, which in turn makes learning and teaching very rewarding for staff. One policy-maker commented:

It’s really the most fulfilling teaching because the students are usually motivated and you’re actually then on a journey together.

• enhances the credibility and status of the teacher in the eyes of the students if they perceive that the academic is a leader and expert in the field by virtue of their research.

Certainly students rank highly the notion of somebody being an expert in their field.

...students avail themselves of all kinds of avenues to find out about lecturers...when they get online and find out so-and-so has done all this work, it has to have an impact on them in terms of credibility.

• helps to develop the career pathways of early career researchers by ‘bringing them into the teaching framework where they are really supported and quality assurance is supported’. In other words early career academic staff are encouraged to ‘take a higher level of engagement’ in the life of the university when they are encouraged to make connections between their research and their teaching;
• NOTE: In talking about the TRN and academic staff promotion, the policy-makers spoke about the value of both disciplinary research as well as pedagogical research, or the scholarship of teaching and learning. For instance, one commented:

The things we’re teaching are based on research and being able to do research on our teaching does enhance the value that is seen for teaching.

Benefits to the university through benefits to students
The university may benefit from the TRN in several ways. One important benefit derives from positive student experiences with teaching-research linkages. Policy-makers commented that the TRN could be beneficial to the university by enhancing student learning and outcomes. From the perspective of policy-makers, some examples of such benefits to students include:

• providing direction and choice in terms of later course selection and graduate study options, i.e., ‘targeting students who look like they might turn into researchers’, from the first year;
• development of students’ research and critical thinking skills that enable them to stay abreast of new ideas in the discipline and to conduct independent inquiry beyond the classroom;

…in terms of what a university education is…students should be learning to be researchers of some kind.

• enhanced motivation and engagement as a result of being taught by highly respected and expert researchers in the field;

• opportunities to learn in a research-rich environment from ‘cutting edge’ researchers;

I believe you should have top researchers giving classes and engaging the students. Because they should be at the cutting edge of their disciplines and hence able to enthuse students and give intellectual excitement to the teaching program.

• seeing the relevance of learning in context, i.e., when students learn about the theory as well as its application in practical research-based settings, they ‘understand what they’re learning and why, that there is a point to it’;
• opportunities to build improved connections and relationships with academic staff.

I think they [students] begin to see the academic as a person and that’s part of building a relationship … the academic becomes real when they talk about their own research or when they engage students in terms of shared research interests.