About the Tertiary Research Excellence Fund#

The Government is introducing the Tertiary Research Excellence Fund (TREF) to replace the Performance-Based Research Fund (PBRF).

The TREF will allocate $315 million every year to the tertiary education sector to:

• support research capability
• reward and encourage high-quality, impactful research.

Purpose of the fund#

The TREF will have lower compliance costs than the PBRF. It will use a mix of new and existing metrics to measure tertiary education organisations' research performance.

It will also focus more on the real world impact of research, such as how it helps businesses or influences government decisions. The fund was designed following advice from a universities review led by Sir Peter Gluckman, along with input from experts and organisations across the sector.

Read the recommendations of the review below.

University Advisory Group

Implementation and design#

The Tertiary Education Commission is implementing the fund. This will include creating the new datasets needed for the new metrics.

Work to introduce it has already started. PBRF funding will continue up to the end of 2028 and TREF funding will start from 2029.

Learn more about the design of the TREF in Cabinet papers below.

Funding components#

The TREF has 6 components. 2 will apply to all provider types, 3 are for universities, and 1 is for polytechnics, wānanga and private training establishments (PTEs) only.

All eligible providers#

• Research degree completions (30% of total fund).
• External research income (25% of total fund).

Universities#

• Field-weighted citation measure (30% of total fund).
• Commercialisation (7.5% of total fund).
• Policy impact (5% of total fund).

Polytechnics, wānanga and PTEs can opt in to this component if they want. If they choose to opt in, they will not receive any funding from the research capacity component.

Polytechnics, wānanga and PTEs#

• Research capacity based on contracted/committed staff research time (2.5% of total fund).

By default, polytechnics, wānanga and PTEs will receive funding through this component unless they choose to opt-in to the universities components. Universities cannot opt in to this component.