Category: Research Funding

  • The R&D buckets are here to stay – what matters now is how they’re used

    The R&D buckets are here to stay – what matters now is how they’re used

    The Budget and the introduction of DSIT’s new bucket framework mark a shift in how government wants to think and talk about research and innovation. With growth now central to the government’s agenda, it is a clear attempt to answer Treasury’s perennial question: what does the public get for its money?

    At the centre of this shift sits the idea of R&D “buckets”: a four-part categorisation of public R&D funding into curiosity-driven research, government priorities, innovation support and cross-cutting infrastructure.

    The logic behind the buckets is easy to understand. The UK system is complex, with budget lines stretching across a maze of research councils, departments, institutes, academies and government labs. Even seasoned insiders need a cup of coffee before attempting to decipher the charts on one of UKRI’s much-valued budget explainers.

    From the Treasury’s perspective, the lack of clarity is a barrier to the value of government investment. DSIT’s response is the bucket model: a clearer way of presenting public investment that moves the conversation away from budget lines and towards outcomes that matter to citizens. If this helps build broader support for R&D across departments and with the public, as CaSE’s latest research suggests is needed, it could be hugely valuable.

    The outcomes challenge

    One consequence of an outcomes-driven model, however, is that different types of research will find it easier or harder to demonstrate their value. Basic and curiosity-driven research can be difficult to evidence through simple KPIs or narrow ROI measures.

    In contrast, some forms of applied R&D lend themselves more easily to straightforward metrics. The Higher Education Innovation Fund (HEIF) is a good example. It can demonstrate a return on investment of £14.80 to £1 in ways that are simple to communicate and easy for officials to interpret. In a system that places a premium on measurable outcomes, this kind of clarity is powerful.

    If outcomes become the dominant organising logic, there is a risk that bucket one, which covers curiosity-driven research, could appear on paper to be the least “investable” – especially under a future minister who is less supportive of blue-skies research. The danger is not deliberate neglect, but an unintended shift in perception, whereby discovery research is viewed as separate from, rather than essential to, mission-led or innovation-focused work.

    The challenge becomes even clearer when we look at quality-related research funding (QR). Few funding mechanisms are as versatile or as important to the health of the research ecosystem. QR supports discovery research, helps universities leverage private investment, underpins mission- and place-based activity, and fills the gaps left by research council and charity grants. It is the flexible connective tissue that keeps the system functioning.

    Trying to code QR neatly into a single bucket, as bucket one, doesn’t reflect reality. It may make the diagrams tidier, but it also risks narrowing Whitehall’s understanding of how QR actually works. Worse, it could make QR more vulnerable at fiscal events if bucket one is cast as the “future problem” bucket, the category that can be trimmed without immediately visible consequences.

    The trap of over-simplification

    That brings us to a wider point about the buckets themselves. The intention with buckets is to draw a much more explicit line between priorities, investment and impact. This is a reasonable goal. But the risk is that it invites interpretations that are too neat. Most research does not sit cleanly in any one category. The system is interdependent, porous and overlapping. Innovation depends on discovery research. Regional growth depends on long-term capability. And capability only exists if the UK continues to invest in talent, infrastructure and basic research.

    Rather than accepting a model that implies hard boundaries, it may be more helpful to embrace, and actively communicate, this interdependence. A Venn diagram might be a more honest reflection than three or four boxes with solid walls.

    The aim is not to relabel the buckets, but to strengthen the narrative around how the types of research we fund reinforce each other, rather than competing for space in a zero-sum system. This kind of framing could also help government understand why certain funding streams look costly on paper, but yield value across a wide range of outcomes over time.

    One argument is that by identifying curiosity-driven research as a distinct bucket, it will be harder for future governments to cut it without doing so publicly. There is some truth in this. Transparency can raise the political cost of reducing support for basic research. But the counterargument is also important. Once bucket one becomes a visible and discrete line of spend, it could also become more vulnerable during fiscal consolidations. Ministers looking to free up resources for missions or innovation-focused interventions may see it as an easier place to make adjustments, especially if the definition of “impact” narrows over time.

    Shovel ready

    This is why the narrative around the buckets matters as much as the buckets themselves. If they are understood as three separate spaces competing for limited resources, the system loses coherence. Discovery becomes something distant from growth, rather than the engine that drives it. Missions appear disconnected from the long-term capability required to achieve them. Innovation emerges as a standalone activity rather than as part of a pipeline that begins with public investment in fundamental science.

    The bucket framework is not going away. It will shape how government talks about R&D for years to come. This makes the next phase critical: there is an opportunity now to influence how the buckets are interpreted, how they are used in practice and how the narrative around them is constructed.

    If treated as rigid boundaries, the buckets risk weakening the case for long-term investment in capability. But if used as a way of telling a more coherent story about the interdependence of discovery, missions and innovation, they could help build stronger cross-government support for R&D. The challenge is to make sure the latter happens.

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  • Clean energy research funds under threat – Campus Review

    Clean energy research funds under threat – Campus Review

    There has been much excitement since Australia signed a landmark agreement with the United States last month to expand cooperation on critical minerals and rare earth elements.

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  • Notes on Research Policy, Here and Abroad

    Notes on Research Policy, Here and Abroad

    Hi all. I thought I would take some time to have a chat about how research policy is evolving in other countries, because I think there are some lessons we need to learn here in Canada.

    One piece of news that struck me this week came from Switzerland, where the federal government is slashing the budget of the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) by 20%. If the Swiss, a technological powerhouse of a nation, with a broad left-right coalition in power and a more or less balanced budget, are cutting back on science like this, then we might all have to re-think the idea that being anti-Science is just a manifestation of right-wing populism. Higher education as a whole has some thinking to do.

    And right now, two countries are in fact re-thinking science quite a bit. In the UK, the new head of UK Research and Innovation (roughly, that country’s One Big Granting Council), has told institutions that they might need to start “doing fewer things but doing them well”, to which the President of Universities UK and vice-chancellor of Manchester Metropolitan University Malcom-Press added that he was “hearing from government is that [they] don’t want to be investing in areas of research where we don’t have the quality and we don’t have the scale.” And, the kicker: “You can’t have hobbyist research that’s unfunded going on in institutions. We can’t afford it.”

    Over to Australia, where a few months ago the government set up a Strategic Examination of Research and Development, which released a discussion paper, held consultations and got feedback (which it published) and has now released six more “issue” papers for consultation which detail government thinking in many different and more detailed ways. If this sounds magical to you, it is because you are from Canada, where the standard practice for policymaking is to do everything behind closed doors and treat stakeholders like mushrooms (in the dark with only fecal matter for company) instead of a place where policy-making is treated as a serious endeavour in which public input and expert advice is welcomed. 

    For today’s purposes however, what matters is not process but policy. The review is seriously considering a number of fairly radical ideas, such as creating a few national “focus areas” for research funding, which would attract higher rates of overhead and requiring institutions to focus their efforts in one of these priority areas via mission-based compacts (which are sort of like Ontario’s Multi-Year Agreements, only they are meaningful) so as to build scale and specialization. 

    Whew.

    One thing that strikes me as odd about both the UK and Australian line of thinking is the idea that institutional specialization matters all that much. While lots of research is done at the level of the individual lab, most “big science” – the stuff people who dream about specialization have in mind when the talk about science – happens in teams which span many institutions, and more often than not across national borders as well. I get the sense that the phenomenon of institutional rankings have fried policy makers’ brains somewhat: they seem to think that the correct way to think about science is at the level of the institution, rather than labs or networks of laboratories. It’s kind of bananas. We can be glad that this kind of thinking has not infected Canadian policy too much because the network concept is more ingrained here.

    Which brings me to news here at home. 

    The rumour out of Ottawa is that in the next few months (still not clear if this is going to be fall 2025 or Spring 2026) there will be an announcement of a new envelope of money for research. But very definitely not inquiry-driven research. No, this is money which the feds intend to spend as part of the increase in “defence” spending which is supposed to rise to 2% of GDP by 2025-2026 and 5% by 2035. So, the kinds of things it will need to go to will be “security”, likely defined relatively generously. It will be for projects in space, protection of critical infrastructure, resiliency, maybe energy production, etc.  I don’t think this is going to be all about STEM and making widgets – there will be at least some room for social science in these areas and maybe humanities, too, though this seems to me a harder pitch to make. It is not clear from what I have heard if this is going to be one big pie or a series of smaller pies, divided up wither by mission or by existing granting council. But the money does seem to be on its way.

    Now before I go any further, I should point out that I have not heard anyone say that these new research envelopes are actually going to contain new money beyond what was spent in 2024-25.  As I pointed out a couple of weeks ago, that would be hard to square with the government’s deficit-fighting commitments.

    In fact, if I had to guess right now, the best-case scenario would be that the Liberals will do this by taking some or all of the 88% of the Budget 2024 research commitment to the tri-councils and push it into these new envelopes (worst-case scenario: they nuke the 88% of the 2024 Budget commitment they haven’t yet spent and claw back money from existing commitments to make these new envelopes). 

    So, obviously no push here for institutional specialization, but where our debate echoes those of the UK and Australia is that all three governments seem to want to shift away from broad-based calls for inquiry driven research and toward more mission-based research in some vaguely defined areas of national priority.  I know this is going to irritate and anger many people, but genuinely I don’t see many politically practical alternatives right now. As I said back here: if defending existing inquiry-driven tri-council budgets is the hill the sector chooses to die on, we’re all going to be in big trouble. 

    No one will forcing individual researchers or institutions to be part of this shift to mission-driven research, but clearly that’s where the money is going to be. So, my advice to VPs Research is: get your ducks in a row on this now. Figure out who in your institution does anything that can even tangentially be referred to as “security-enhancing”. Figure out what kinds of pitches you might want to make.  Start testing your elevator pitches. There will be rewards to first movers in this area.

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  • The Coming Federal Cuts – Part 3: ISED

    The Coming Federal Cuts – Part 3: ISED

    Monday, we looked at the country’s overall financial situation (dire), and yesterday we looked at how cuts of a magnitude of 15% might affect key programs like the Canada Education Savings Program and the Canada Student Financial Assistance Program. Today, we’re going to look at how a 15% cut might affect the Government of Canada’s research subsidies, which in the main are run through the Ministry of innovation, Science and Economic Development (ISED). 

    (I will be speaking about “the tri-councils” as a single funding line; I am aware that the Canadian Institute for Health Research (CIHR) is funded through Health Canada but for this exercise it is easier just to lump them together).

    Let’s start by acknowledging that ISED is a sprawling mess of a department with small programs with very little political protection littered all over the place. I wouldn’t bet the farm on the $12 million “Futurpreneur Canada” making it out of this budget round alive. I also doubt the Universal Broadband Fund is going to continue at $900 million per year. Computers for Schools (sounded great in the 90s, less so now) and Computers for Schools Interns would also be on my endangered list. I suspect that the various regional development funds might be in for an outsized hit as well. All of which is to say that it is possible that the research enterprise – that is, the tri-Councils, the National Research Council (NRC), the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) and all those organizations that get part or all their money through the Strategic Science Fund – might not get hit with a 15% cut. It’s quite possible all these other areas might take an outsized hit and allow the actual science stuff to get off with a lighter cut.

    That said, remember this key point: the budget exercise is not about cutting 15% of funding from where it should theoretically be in three years’ time (the government has a fiscal framework that extends out four or five years). It is about cutting expenditures from a 2024-25 baseline. That means that to get through any previously planned increase in spending, the cuts to existing programs must be more than 15%. 

    This matters for two reasons. First, it is because the government runs its subsidies to electric vehicles manufacturers through ISED. Those subsidies were worth $39M in 2024-25; they were planned to cost $2.1 billion this year and $4.2 billion in 2027-28 (i.e. it’s about half the department’s direct budget spend come two years from now, and about a third of total sci/tech spend if you include the tri-councils). To accommodate that increase while following the letter of the budget reduction request would basically mean requiring the entire department to shut down. That’s probably not happening (though one presumes that Carney’s announcement last week releasing Canadian auto manufacturers from their 20% EV sales target in 2026 might also lead to a reduction in EV subsidies to manufacturers). 

    Second, remember budget 2024? The one where the Liberals promised $1.8 billion in new spending on research and the whole sector cheered with relief? Yeah, well only $75 million went into the budget framework for 2024-25; 87% of that 1.8 billion is backloaded until after spring 2026. So, basically none of it is protected, and it’s all at risk. I wouldn’t be surprised in the least if they just cancelled the whole thing. And then, on top of that, we must worry about what happens to existing programs, and whether they take a 15% hit.

    CIHR transfers about $1.2 billion to Canadian post-secondary institutes each year, while the National Science and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) transfers about $1 billion, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) transfers about $440 million (although a fair bit of that last one includes combined tri-council projects which administratively run through SSHRC, including – if I am not mistaken – funding for the Canada First Research Excellence Fund). CFI is another $550 million a year or so. NRC is about $1.7 billion per year. The Strategic Science Fund is another $900 million or so, closer to a billion if you include base funding for Genome Canada. Canada Research Chairs are another $300 million. Call it $6.2 billion in total. Required savings to get to a 15% cut is therefore just under $1 billion.

    Where to start?

    Ask most researchers at universities what they would prefer, and the answer is likely that they would eliminate everything except the tri-council funding. Ditch CFI, significantly cut NRC, definitely obliterate the Strategic Science Fund – anything, anything, anything but touch tri-Council grants. I understand the preference, but as I noted last week, this is a monumentally detrimental position for the sector to take. Yes, basic research and the existing grant system are the basis of the existing tenure and promotion system, and as such is naturally dear to those in the system, but almost no one in Ottawa thinks that’s what these systems are for. If we’re going to keep research funding afloat, it’s probably going to be through more spending on things like the Strategic Science Fund.

    I have very little insight into the state of official Ottawa’s current thinking on the relative value of these various programs, but I could imagine three basic scenarios that get us to $1 billion in savings.

    Option 1 is a straight 15% cut across the board. Take out $400 million or so from the granting councils, $80 million from CFI, $250 million from NRC, cut the Strategic Science Fund and Genome Canada to the tune of $150 million or so, and lose about 350 Canada Research Chairs. 

    Option 2 would be the spare the professors approach. Now, you probably can’t spare them entirely, because they are such a big proportion of the overall expenditure, but if you jacked up the cuts to CFI, NRC and Strategic Science to say 25%, you could hold the losses to CRCs and the tri-councils to under $100M. I think this is unlikely, but it is a possible scenario.

    Option 3 would be the hammer the tri-councils approach. Because, as I said, I don’t think they are particularly well-liked at Finance/PMO. This is close to the inverse of option 2; zero cuts to NRC and Strategic Science, keep the CFI cut at 15% and take the rest of the necessary money out of the tri-councils. That would mean a cut of about $800 million or about 30% to council funding.

    And remember, all of this is on top of walking back the measures announced in the 2024 Budget. Ugly doesn’t even begin to cover it.

    To be clear: I suspect it is unlikely that the research area will get a cut of 15%, in part because officials will feel bad about doing serious damage to existing budgets after, I suspect, already taking away the Budget 2024 measures. If I had to guess, I would say that the department will probably come down hardest on regional development subsidies. Nevertheless, the scenarios above are possible even if not probable. Universities should start thinking about what they might mean and how they might cope. 

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  • Five Rules for 2025-26 | HESA

    Five Rules for 2025-26 | HESA

    Morning all. 

    It’s been a busy summer at HESA Towers. We’ve been developing Boardwise, our new suite of governance products with our partners at Balsam Advisory, and exploring new ideas on data governance and analytics with our friends at Plaid Analytics. We’ve also been touring the country with the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) Thought Leadership Office and the Business +  Higher Education Roundtable (BHER) to talk about higher education, economic growth and productivity. The “what we heard” document from those sessions will be out in mid-September, and there are several follow-up events scheduled, including a leaders’ summit hosted by RBC later this month. This event will focus mainly on how higher education and business can work together to tackle some of the country’s most pressing challenges, such as clean energy and technology, artificial intelligence, and defence. Further insights from this work will also be explored at the BHER Executive Summit in February 2026.

    And, of course, our own Re: University conference – where we will be presenting some of the most interesting ideas out there to improve and inspire the quality, effectiveness and experience of postsecondary education in Canada – is coming up in late January in Ottawa. (Tickets are going fast – reserve your spot!)

    A couple of other small programming notes: 

    • The State of Post-Secondary Education in Canada 2025 will be released tomorrow. 
    • The World of Higher Educationpodcast will still come out every Thursday, but we’re back to an audio-only format because editing is a hassle and apparently very few of you are videophiles. 
    • The Fifteen will continue to bring you the top global higher education stories every other week. 
    • Next Friday will mark the debut of a new biweekly webinar series, Friday Focus, to be hosted by Tiffany MacLennan, surfacing the most interesting shifts and innovations in Canadian higher education – from AI & technology, cutting-edge programming, and the everchanging student experience – through the voices of those leading the change. We hope you can join us. 
    • Our University Vice Presidents Network (UVPN) is going strong and is scheduled to convene in Victoria in November, Quebec City in February, and then internationally for a May 2026 Study Tour in Germany. 
    • Finally, we are targeting the first week of December for the launch of the World of Higher Education Annual Review 2025, a new year-in-review publication which tries to document the year’s shifts across the whole of our crazy sector, right around the globe, using statistics, stories and strategic planning documents.

    Now, on to the year ahead.

    In most places, I think the hard part for colleges is over.  2025-26 isn’t going to be an easy year, by any means, but the big decisions have mostly been made, future directions have been set and the floor on institutional income has either been reached or is in sight. 

    Universities, on the other hand, are a different story.  They have – not everywhere, but in the main – been more hesitant to act. It’s a conservative sector that is resistant to change, be it financial, organizational or cultural. And the financial problems the sector faces – again, not everywhere but in the main – are going to drag on for quite awhile mainly because international student numbers aren’t bouncing back the way they might have (more on that next week) and because an imminent recession is the opposite of helpful when it comes to provincial finances.

    So, it’s going to be a tough year ahead.  In my mind, I think there are 5 rules for success.

    Rule 1 – Act like Universities are a Means to an End, not an End in Themselves.  Literally the worst thing universities can say right now is “universities are crucial, give us more money”. It’s an utterly tone-deaf approach, even if you give it an “elbows up” spin.  The sector has been saying it for years and it clearly hasn’t worked, so continuing with this approach is the literal definition of insanity. And the reason it doesn’t work is because Canadians (or at least Canadian politicians) simply don’t believe that universities are crucial because they don’t believe that knowledge and science is useful. Rather, they far prefer a Canada where the construction and natural resources industries continue to call the shots (if there is a Deep State in Canada, it is surely comprised of these two sectors and their watercarriers). The case we need to make is not “spend on universities”, it’s “a knowledge-driven Canada is a better Canada”.  And more importantly, it’s not a case institutions can make on their own – they need to make it with lots of other actors, particularly from industry.  Alliances, people. Form alliances.  Downsize your government relations team, build up your community relations efforts.

    Rule 2 – Stop with the Tri-Council Fundamentalism.  Federal budgets for research are going to get hammered in the coming months. This will make a lot of people argue that we should ditch all research funds except the tri-councils because inquiry-driven research is sacred etc. I understand the instinct here because so many institutions make council success a key part of the tenure/promotion process. But it’s a bad instinct. No one in Ottawa cares about your tenure processes. You can argue all you want about how basic research is more cost-efficient in terms of driving long-term discovery, but i) the public likes some short-term wins mixed in with the long-term ones and b) nobody outside universities is buying that one story about NSERC funding Geoffrey Hinton’s AI research 30 year ago as a business case for science. Like, nobody. Get over it. Understand that if there is to be growth in Canadian research funding in future, it’s going to look a lot more like Horizon Europe or the Biden Administration’s Chips and Science Act, both of which were widely hailed as being good for science despite – or perhaps because – they are largely mission-driven rather than inquiry-driven. If this is the hill the community chooses to die on, God help us all. 

    Rule 3 – Focus on what you can control, not what you can’t. Yes, things are bad.  You can spend time complaining about it – government is short-sighted, we’re always getting shafted by the granting councils, etc. – or you can get busy. Fire up your friend-raising and fund-raising. Ramp up your spend/effort on international recruitment (more on this next week). Make a big bang with some new programs that stand out. Go big on one theme. Stand out. Please.

    Rule 4 – Faster Collegiality is a Must. Part of regaining public confidence is going to involve being able to make changes at the institutional level with much more speed and determination than is historically the case. That means being able to deliver on promises and priority in the immediate term, not in some far-off future, to be able to act as an institution and not just as a sack full of cats fighting over research priorities and teaching schedules. The way this normally happens is to concentrate power in the hands of the upper administration. This is how it works in most of Asia, most of the United States, and increasingly in Europe as well (though crucially, senior admin tends to be elected in Europe). But it doesn’t have to be like that. There’s no obvious reason why collegial governance needs to be slow: it’s just custom and practice. I’ve been saying for a while that better, faster governance is key to institutions in rough times and while too few have heeded that advice, it’s never too late to start.

    Rule 5 – Do less, but do it better. Universities are ridiculously strung out. Many forces are at work here, but I will single out two. At a system level, we have governance systems that are great at approving new programs and initiatives but absolutely rotten at pruning them once they have outlived their purpose. Result: institutions do too much, but do it badly, thus leading to enshittifcation. But it works at the level of individual faculty too, since departments tend to hire the biggest keeners in the system, the kind of people who won’t say no to more research, or extra teaching, or whatever. Result: burnout. In a normal organization, a manager would come along and try to make workloads manageable. But since Canadian academia long ago decided that the main purpose of department chairs is to protect staff from unwanted Decanal or Provostial schemes rather than to manage academics’ workloads, there is no one in the system who can actually make the problem go away (high-sounding talk about “wellness” doesn’t do the trick either). So, seriously, do less.

    It’s going to be a hard year (or let’s face it, a hard few years), but if everyone gets the basics right, we can come out of this better and stronger. 

    Good luck everyone. Back to work!

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  • Dundee’s troubles and the state of the sector

    Dundee’s troubles and the state of the sector

    “Dundee University’s reputation soars,” shouted the front page of the Courier in 2004. Making the most of a rise in the league tables, the then university secretary highlighted the institution’s commitment to excellent learning and teaching, its outstanding research and its contribution to the local community.

    Fast forward 21 years and more recent press coverage has been less positive – the university’s desperate financial situation, rapid departures by senior staff, emergency government funding, threats of large-scale job losses and very painful sessions before the Scottish parliament education committee.

    A hard-hitting report by former Glasgow Caledonian principal Pamela Gillies put the blame on “poor financial judgement, inadequate management and reporting, poor monitoring of the financial sustainability KPI, a lack of agility in responding to a fall in income by the University leadership and weak governance in relation to financial accountability by the University Court” compounded by the “top-down, hierarchical and reportedly over-confident style of leadership and management” and “a culture in which challenge was actively discouraged.”

    The 64-page document is excoriating in its condemnation of senior officers and the university’s governors – a view shared by the select committee, where MSPs expressed their criticism in the strongest possible terms. Later events – including the departure of the interim finance director after a week in the job – have only made the agony worse.

    The financial collapse at Dundee inevitably raises questions for the rest of the HE sector in Scotland and the UK as a whole. Are the same weaknesses present in other institutions? Is higher education in crisis? And how should governments and the sector respond?

    Governance and management

    Before going any further, I must declare a personal interest – I was the university secretary quoted in the 2004 press article and I have retained an abiding affection for the University of Dundee since leaving in 2008.

    I also chaired the group that produced the latest revision of the Scottish Code for Good Higher Education Governance in 2023 – a document which Professor Gillies deems fit for purpose, provided institutions follow it carefully. However, implementing the code of governance, excellent as it is, will not be enough – we all need to learn lessons from the Dundee story and make sure that our own universities are protected from a similar fate. To that end, we ought to engage in an open discussion about what has happened and consider it from every angle.

    So far, the criticism has focused on the failings of Dundee’s senior managers and governors. In response, they have accepted that they should have spotted the financial problems earlier and taken avoiding action. That way, as one officer put it to the committee, they could have dealt with them “under their own steam”.

    Senior managers and the university court should certainly have been aware of the worsening financial situation in the second half of academic year 2023–24. Student recruitment fell in September 2023 and again in January 2024; meanwhile the international market was contracting and the UK government looked set to implement unhelpful policy developments as part of its anti-immigrant agenda.

    At that stage, the university’s executive board should have been keeping an eagle eye on the monthly management accounts, freezing all but essential staff recruitment and paring back expenditure. The failure even to recognise there was a financial deficit until October 2024 was a critical lapse.

    Reflecting on this, all universities will now be examining their systems, processes and culture to make sure they do not fall into the same trap. The sense of urgency will be especially acute in institutions which are running deficits – a plight that now affects many HEIs previously considered immune to such challenges. In Scotland, the cabinet secretary for education has urged the sector to address the problem of “unsustainable jobs” – apparently giving the green light to further staffing reductions.

    University courts and councils will be assessing governance arrangements and exploring how to strengthen financial scrutiny; some will also be reviewing the way they interact with their vice chancellors and senior teams. In doing this, they should ensure that senior officers and trade union reps are enabled to challenge heads of institutions and bring any concerns they have to the governing body.

    Model issues

    All of this is sensible, but the debate so far has largely ignored some fundamental points. Most importantly, the sector needs a different financial model – it cannot survive by placing ever greater reliance on the international student fee account. In England, the UK government has at least allowed the home undergraduate fees cap to increase in line with inflation but Holyrood has not made a similar move, and nor is it likely to before the 2026 Scottish election.

    The lack of funding will mean further retrenchments and cost-cutting in estates and IT budgets; unpalatable options such as delaying the national pay uplift or cancelling academic promotions rounds may also come into play. Against this background, Scotland’s politicians must step up – we need to treat university funding as a national problem which deserves an enduring solution, preferably identified through a review supported by all parties.

    Returning to Dundee, there is a reason why that university was so badly hit that goes beyond mistakes made by senior management. For at least 30 years, Dundee has been a powerhouse of life sciences research, with a special focus on cancer and tropical diseases. A glance at the 2021 REF results for biological sciences bears this out – there is Dundee, ranked number two behind the Institute of Cancer Research, ahead of Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial and many other universities with much greater resources.

    This is an extraordinary story – a relatively small, provincial university taking on and beating some of the greatest and best-funded institutions in the world; in the process, Dundee’s researchers have benefited humanity, not just in this country but also across the global south. Sir Alfred Cuschieri, Sir David Lane, Sir Philip Cohen, Cheryll Tickle CBE, Sir Pete Downes, Sir Mike Ferguson – the list of top biomedical scientists whose careers have flourished at Dundee is hugely impressive.

    However, this achievement comes at a price – even 20 years ago, Dundee struggled to generate surpluses which would protect the institution against a rainy day. As everyone knows, research funding simply does not cover the cost of the work it is supposed to support – universities have to cross-subsidise scientific endeavour with endowments, donations and international student fees.

    The challenge is even greater when much of your funding is from charities, which pay a lower overhead than government research councils. That left Dundee in an especially vulnerable position when the international student recruitment market began to contract in 2023–24 – a problem not shared by other universities with a fraction of Dundee’s research activity.

    Given what has happened, it is right that universities conduct self-audits and make certain that their own houses are in order. The Scottish government and the funding council should also seek assurance that Scotland’s HEIs are effectively led and managed. But the deeper question of how the sector should be funded still needs to be addressed, and quickly.

    As part of this we should recognise that world-class research of the kind nurtured in Dundee is something to be cherished; we should all back the recovery effort on Tayside. For my part, I believe strongly that the university will remain a powerhouse of research and excellence in learning and teaching for decades to come. With the right support, Dundee’s reputation will soon soar again.

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  • Research funding requires research capacity

    Research funding requires research capacity

    This year marks 100 years since the Leverhulme Trust was established. It’s a moment for us to reflect on the extraordinary research the Trust has supported over that period – but also to look forward.

    That’s why the Leverhulme Trust Board has decided to commit an additional £100 million to UK university research over the next few years, on top of our usual £120m annual spend.

    Investing in the future

    This is not a nostalgic gesture. It is a deliberate investment in a university sector that continues to deliver world-class research, even as it faces immense financial pressure. The UK’s research base is one of the country’s greatest assets. However, it is under strain, despite the welcome increase in funding for research and development in the recent spending review.

    Universities are grappling with rising costs and uncertainty around international student income. In this context, the Trust’s centenary investment is a celebration of the sector’s excellence and, we hope, a timely contribution to sustaining that excellence.

    We are directing this funding where we believe it can make the greatest difference: into blue skies research and supporting the next generation of researchers. These are areas where funding has become increasingly difficult to secure, and where we can therefore add the most value. We are, however, not changing our usual approach, which is to leave academics, who are at the forefront of their fields, to determine the questions that are most important and pressing.

    Blue sky bedrock

    Blue skies research – curiosity-driven, often interdisciplinary, and sometimes high-risk – is the core mission of the Trust. This kind of research is also the bedrock on which much social, technological and economic progress rests. It is easy to identify vitally important blue skies research retrospectively. Much harder to prove its value in advance.

    Our award to Kostya Novoselov early in his career looks prescient – he went on to win the Nobel for his work on graphene. But predicting which of the novel projects we fund will pay off in the long term is very tricky. While the Trust’s support for Chris Stringer’s work with the Natural History Museum completely changed our understanding of early human life in Britain, it’s hard to put a value on that.

    The need to demonstrate likely impact, combined with research funding streams that are more focused on specific economic priorities, has made it harder for some disciplines to pursue discovery research. The value of quality research (QR) funding in England, which was once the major source for discovery research, has also declined by 15 per cent since 2010.

    Yet, it is blue skies research that often leads to the most profound breakthroughs. Charity funding that is patient and takes risks can therefore make a real contribution here.

    Investment at every stage

    To that end, the Trust will use £50m to establish new research centres, each receiving up to £10 million to tackle big questions over a decade. This research centre model has proven to be highly effective, not only in addressing critical issues, but also in building research capacity. Previous Leverhulme Centres have contributed to areas such as climate change, wildfires, the origins of life, ethical AI, and demographic modelling, to name but a few.

    We are also investing in the next generation of researchers. We will commit an additional £20m to doctoral training, doubling our usual spend, to support approximately 200 PhD students. This is another area under financial pressure, particularly in some arts and humanities fields.

    This investment is not just about producing future academics. We know that not all PhD graduates will stay in academia. Nor should they. One of the strengths of the UK’s research system is its ability to develop talent that contributes across a range of sectors. I recently spoke with a Leverhulme-funded doctoral student whose work explores the ethics of algorithmic decision-making. Their research is deeply theoretical, but its implications are hugely practical. Whether they end up in academia, government, or industry, their skills will be vital in tackling the AI-related challenges ahead.

    And funding academics at the beginning of their career is only part of the story. Our centenary awards will support mid-career researchers in building their first research team, a challenging transition given the increasing teaching demands in some institutions. We will also provide funding to support aspiring scholars from underrepresented groups, as well as provide mentoring and networking opportunities. We want to ensure that talented individuals from all backgrounds can access research careers and thrive within them.

    Charity funding as part of a research ecosystem

    Charities like the Leverhulme Trust have long played a significant role in supporting UK research, contributing about £2 billion per annum in total. But charity funding is not designed to support the basic infrastructure of universities. This means that any grant we award to a university also requires a contribution from the institution itself because, like most charities, we do not cover overhead costs, which is undoubtedly a challenge for universities.

    As the Nurse Review highlighted, both domestic student teaching and university research are cross-subsidised from other income streams. Further, while the UK’s research system is one of the most productive and internationally connected in the world, it is also one of the most financially exposed and the model of relying on the cross-subsidy of research with income from international students has come under immense pressure.

    We therefore need to find additional ways to sustain the research capacity that underpins so much of the UK’s economic, social, and cultural life. This is not just about protecting and preserving what we have; it is about shaping what comes next. Research is not a luxury. It is a necessity, especially in a world facing complex challenges, from climate change to economic and technological disruptions.

    To maintain the UK’s position as a global research leader, we need a funding system that provides long-term stability.

    We hope our investment will not only help to sustain the intellectual ambition that defines the UK’s research community but also prompt a wider conversation – one about how we value research, how we fund it, and how we ensure that its benefits are shared as widely as possible.

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  • The spending review is a critical moment for UK science and innovation

    The spending review is a critical moment for UK science and innovation

    A series of key government announcements over the coming weeks will set the direction of travel for research and innovation for years to come. Next week’s spending review will set the financial parameters for the remainder of this Parliament – and we shouldn’t expect this outcome to maintain the status quo, given this is the first zero-based review under a Labour government for 17 years.

    Accompanying this will be the industrial strategy white paper, which is likely to have a focus on driving innovation and increasing the diffusion and adoption of technologies across the economy – in which the UK’s universities will need to be key delivery partners. We can also expect more detail on the proposals in the immigration white paper, with implications for international student and staff flows to the UK.

    The outcome for higher education and research remains hard to call, but the government has sent early signals that it recognises the value of investment in R&D as crucial to transforming the UK’s economy. In a volatile fiscal environment, DSIT’s R&D budget saw a real-terms increase of 8.5 per cent for 2025–26 with protection for “core research” activity within this.

    Looking ahead to the spending review, the Institute for Fiscal Studies has pointed out that the fiscal envelope set by the Chancellor for capital spending – which is how R&D is classified – at the spring statement is significantly frontloaded. There is scope for increases in the early years of the spending review period and then real-terms declines from 2027–28. With such significant constraints on the public finances, it’s more essential than ever that the UK’s R&D funding system maximises efficiency and impact, making the best possible use of available resources.

    International comparisons

    Last month, the Russell Group published a report commissioned from PwC and funded by Wellcome which considered the experiences of countries with very different R&D funding systems, to understand what the UK might learn from our competitors.

    Alongside the UK, the report examined four countries: Canada, Germany, the Netherlands and South Korea, scoring them across five assessment criteria associated with a strong R&D system: strategic alignment to government priorities; autonomy, stability and sustainability; efficiency; and leveraging external investment. It also scored the countries on two measures of output: research excellence and innovation excellence.

    The analysis can help to inform government decisions about how to strike a balance between these criteria. For example, on the face of it there’s a trade-off between prioritising institutional autonomy and ensuring strategic alignment to government priorities. But PwC found that providing universities with more freedom in how they allocate their research funding – for example, through flexible funding streams like Quality-Related (QR) funding – means they can also take strategic long-term decisions, which create advantage for the UK in key research fields for the future.

    Over the years, QR funding and its equivalents in the devolved nations have enabled universities to make investments which have led to innovations and discoveries such as graphene, genomics, opto-electronics, cosmology research, and new tests and treatments for everything from bowel disease to diabetes, dementia and cancer.

    Conversely, aligning too closely to changing political priorities can stifle impact and leave the system vulnerable. PwC found that, at its extreme, a disproportionate reliance on mission-led or priority-driven project grant funding inhibits the ability of institutions to invest outside of government’s immediate priority areas, resulting in less long-term strategic investment.

    With a stretching economic growth mission to deliver, policymakers will be reaching for interventions which encourage private investment into the economy. The PwC report found long-term, stable government incentives are crucial in leveraging industry investment in R&D, alongside supporting a culture of industry-university collaboration. This has worked well in Germany and South Korea with a mix of incentives including tax credits, grants and loans to strengthen innovation capabilities.

    Getting the balance right

    The UK currently lags behind global competitors on the proportion of R&D funded by the business sector, at just over 58 per cent compared to the OECD average of 65 per cent. However, when considering R&D financed by business but performed by higher education institutions, the UK performs fifth highest in the OECD – well above the average.

    This demonstrates the current system is successfully leveraging private sector collaboration and investment into higher education R&D. We should now be pursuing opportunities to bolster this even further. Schemes such as the Higher Education Innovation Fund (HEIF) deliver a proven return on investment: every £1 invested in HEIF yields £14.8 in economic return at the sector-level. PwC’s report noted that HEIF has helped develop “core knowledge exchange capabilities” within UK HEIs which are crucial to building successful partnerships with industry and spinning out new companies and technologies.

    In a time of global uncertainty, economic instability and rapid technological change, investments in R&D still play a key role in tackling our most complex challenges. In its forthcoming spending review – the Russell Group submission is available here – as well as in the industrial strategy white paper and in developing reforms to the visa system, the government will need to balance a number of competing but interrelated objectives. Coordination across government departments will be crucial to ensure all the incentives are pointing in the right direction and to enable sectors such as higher education to maximise the contribution they can make to delivering the government’s missions.

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  • How Labor can use its strong majority to support universities – Campus Review

    How Labor can use its strong majority to support universities – Campus Review

    The higher education sector is craving stability and investment after the policy changes, regulation warnings and instability of Labor’s last term.

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  • From going it alone to sharing university research and innovation services

    From going it alone to sharing university research and innovation services

    Unless you’ve been living under a rock, readers are likely to be very aware of the current financial challenges facing universities across the UK.

    The situation is no different in Scotland where several Scottish universities have reported an adjusted operating deficit position for academic year 2023–24 – although it’s important to note that this position can also reflect the stage of the institution’s investment cycle or actions being taken to restructure as well as reflecting the current year financial performance of an institution.

    These are difficult times for the sector. But a silver lining, if there were one to be found, could be that challenging times present an opportunity to do things differently. Approaches that would have previously been deemed too complicated to undertake can find themselves on the table because they have the potential to drive essential efficiencies and promote sustainability.

    Looming large

    With 18 universities receiving Scottish Funding Council (SFC) core funding for research – “Scottish QR”, the Research Excellence Grant (REG) – the Scottish system is of the size and scale where SFC can regularly have discussions with every vice principal for research. These discussions help us better understand the state of play and the pressures and challenges being faced.

    When we most recently spoke with vice principals, as you’d expect, financial sustainability loomed large. Challenges are having a real impact on how many institutions are considering their R&I activity.

    One of the things we heard is that an increasing number of institutions are exploring sharing back-office services between institutions to create efficiencies.

    This makes sense. Scotland is a small country with a largesse of universities, all of which undertake world-leading research as determined by the REF. We’re also a country of concentrated geography with many of our institutions focused in the same places.

    While these are moves in the right direction for sustainability, there are benefits from things happening sooner rather than later, given that there’s no quick fix for university finances. Here SFC has a role to play, by helping catalyse activity.

    This is the thinking behind the funding opportunity we launched this week – a new R&I Shared Services Collaboration Fund.

    Getting together

    The fund will allow Scottish universities to apply for funding to develop sustainable models and steps to implement sharing services, including but not limited to sharing tech transfer offices (TTOs) and research offices. It will allow:

    • The consolidation of existing distinct functions by replacing them with a single shared function.
    • Institutions with smaller research portfolios to work with larger institutions to gain access to expertise and capability that they don’t currently have.
    • The creation of shared capacity between groups of institutions where limited functions currently exist but new shared capability would drive efficiencies.

    It will kick-start longer-term collaboration by supporting the initial costs of change, enabling institutions to navigate the difficult proof of concept stage and de-risk the exploration of new approaches in a financially constrained environment.

    Our intention is to precipitate and fund a different way of working, investing in change which will enable the change to carry on.

    A total of £3m will be available over academic years 2025–26 and 2026–27 with grants of between £250,000 and £750,000 on offer through open competition. Grants will help to promote system sustainability by supporting increased inter-institutional operational collaboration.

    As well as promoting financial viability, where grants are focused on the sharing of technology transfer office (TTO) services, the fund will increase Scotland’s research commercialisation pipeline by expanding access to key facilities across institutions.

    This provides an opportunity to further Scottish government innovation ambitions as outlined in the National Innovation Strategy. University research commercialisation is central to the strategy and ensuring that world-leading research from across all of Scotland’s universities can be successfully commercialised requires access to critical expertise. The UK government’s spin-out review, published in November 2023, also highlights the value of shared technology transfer expertise across universities.

    And it’s not necessarily just about sharing research offices and TTOs – we’re interested in other proposals for sharing R&I services which meet our criteria.

    Small but mighty

    We’re under no illusions that the R&I Shared Services Collaboration Fund will solve or even make a significant dent in the financial challenges currently being faced by universities. No, doing that will require multi-factored activity across many stakeholders.

    But we hope that this funding will go some way to promoting sustainability and making Scotland’s small but mighty research system function in a way that reflects the opportunities of scale and collaboration we have on our doorstep.

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