If you shut these activities down and convert them into grants, you are not facilitating research - all you are doing is dispensing money. Funding constraints give the NRF difficult choices. It would be a mistake to close down nuclear physics, for example, because good quality alternatives cost even more. At the same time we can't copy larger, more complex First World countries where researchers do what they like and connections with the country's economy occur naturally. Our system is too small.
Evaluation is a sensitive area.
The FRD's peer-review system measures and supports researcher excellence to maintain a strategic knowledge base, explains Von Gruenewaldt, we need experts to recognise global advances and utilise them at home. The CSD, however, evaluates by project, and common funding and performance measures facilitating national and international recognition in different NRF fields remain unknown. Higher education contexts must be considered, however, and individual researchers' needs.