Category: Research

  • Impact can’t be gamed or systematised

    Impact can’t be gamed or systematised

    In a recent Wonkhe blog, Joe Mintz discussed the challenges of policy impact in social sciences and humanities research.

    He highlighted the growing importance of research impact for government (and therefore institutions) but noted significant barriers. These included a disconnect where academics prioritise research quality over early policy engagement and a mutual mistrust that limits research influence on decision-making.

    We have recently published a book on research impact that endeavours to explore the challenges of research impact, and these views chime greatly with us. Our motivation for starting the book project were personal. We have carried out a great deal of impactful research and provided support and training for others wishing to engage in impact. However, we wondered why impact seems to be so poorly understood across the sector, and, we had observed, there was a clear fracture between those who wanted to do impactful research, and institutions who wanted to control the process while not really understanding it.

    Agenda opposition

    There continues to be understandable opposition by some to what has been referred to as “the impact agenda”. One criticism is that impact is something being imposed by government and management that is at odds with the ideology of research. This argument follows that research impact is a market-driven mechanism that pressures academics to demonstrate immediate societal benefits from their research, often at the expense of intellectual freedom and critical inquiry. And a metric driven measurement of research impact may not fully capture the complexity or long-term value of research.

    We can certainly empathise with this perspective, but might suggest that this is, in a large part, due to how impact has manifested in a sector that does not really understand what it can be. In our own experiences we have experienced management “advice” that firstly says do not waste your time doing impact, then, once performance-based research funding becomes attached to it, being told it is very important and your impact needs to be “four star”. And then indifference is replaced with interference and attempts to control, to make sure we’re doing it “properly” and making sure it can be monitored.

    In trying to develop our understanding, we spoke to 25 “impactful” academics, who had objectively demonstrated that their research has high value impact, and a range of research professionals across the sector. It soon became very clear that our own observations were not outliers for those doing impactful research.

    Impact success for those we spoke to came from a personal belief that saw it ingrained in their own research practice – this was something they did because they felt it was important, not because they had been told to. The stakeholders and networks they had, and often spent considerable time building, were their own not their institution’s, and many protected these contacts and networks from institutional interference.

    In most cases, interview subjects said that there was little support from their institutions, they just did the work because they felt it was an important part of their research, and this symbiotic work with stakeholders provided further research opportunities. They could see the value of doing impactful research and felt personally rewarded as a result.

    And many talked of institutional interference, where there was opposition to what they were doing (“you’re not doing impact properly”) and advised from positions of seniority although perhaps not knowledge or, in some cases integrity. They were instructed to do things more in line with university systems, regardless of how poor they might be. There was a clear dissonance between academic identity and management culture, often informed by an “impact industry” where PowerPoints from webinars are disseminated across institutions with little opportunity for deep knowledge becoming embedded.

    Secret sauce

    And many spoke of the research management machine, insisting that they engage with central systems so their work could be “monitored” and having many people around them telling them what to do, but offering no support. This support was often as basic as “do more impact” and “give us the evidence now”. In some cases, threats were made to not submit their case studies should they not follow the “correct process”, even when their work was clearly highly impactful. An odd flex for a senior leader, given QR funding goes to the institution, not the academic.

    While the research that went into this book probably threw up as many questions as answers, one thing was very clear for this work. If it is to be successful, impact cannot be imposed upon academics or centrally controlled, it must originate from the academic’s community and own identity as a researcher. Telling someone to “do some impact because we need another case study” with a year before a REF submission is not good practice; management needs to take time to understand the research academics are doing and explore together how best to support it.

    We are reminded of a comment from one interviewee, who does incredibly interesting and impactful research, and has done for many years. When asked why they do it, they simply said “because I enjoy it and I’m good at it”.

    High quality impact case studies come from high quality research and high-quality impact. This is not something that can be gamed or systematised. Academics need to own impact for it to be successful, and institutions need to respect this.

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  • Action on researcher career development must go beyond surface-level fixes

    Action on researcher career development must go beyond surface-level fixes

    The Concordat to Support the Career Development of Researchers was designed to drive culture change, not compliance. However, many institutional action plans suggest institutions are meeting the letter rather than the spirit of its commitments.

    Financial constraints and the evolving REF 2029 people, culture and environment (PCE) guidance are shaping how institutions support research staff, and universities face a choice: stick with the easy, surface-level interventions that look good on paper, or commit to the tougher, long-term changes that could truly improve research careers.

    The latter is difficult, resource-intensive, and politically fraught – but it is the only route to a research culture that is genuinely sustainable.

    Progress and pressures

    There has been real progress in embedding researcher development in UK higher education. The 2019 review of the concordat highlighted expanded training opportunities, strengthened mentoring schemes, and, crucially, the integration of researcher development into institutional strategies and governance. Many institutions have since used its principles to shape research culture action plans and strategies.

    This progress has been uneven, however. Access to high-quality training and development opportunities varies across the sector, particularly for researchers in smaller, less well-resourced institutions. In addition, new initiatives frequently lack long-term sustainability beyond initial funding.

    Institutional action plans tend to emphasise soft politics – awards, charters and resource hubs – which, while useful, may function as reputational signals more than mechanisms for change. Meanwhile, the concordat’s more challenging commitments, like improving job security, workload management, and the visibility of career pathways across sectors, receive less attention.

    Financial constraints and shifting priorities

    Universities are operating in an era of financial constraint forcing difficult decisions about what can be sustained and what must be scaled back. These financial pressures are already reshaping researcher development and career pathways, with potentially lasting consequences:

    Shift toward low-cost interventions: Institutions may prioritise training, mentoring, and “off the shelf” development workshops as the most financially viable options, while more complex reforms – such as improving career pathways, addressing workload pressures, and ensuring meaningful career learning – are pushed aside.

    Growing precarity and inequity in research careers: With the risk of non-renewal of fixed-term contracts and rising redundancies, instability may increase. The effects will likely be unequal – early-career researchers, those with caring responsibilities, and underrepresented groups are usually most affected in such situations, with workload pressures further widening existing inequities in career progression and retention.

    Shifts in career trajectories: Financial pressures will push more researchers to seek opportunities beyond academia, not always by choice but due to diminishing prospects within universities. This is not in itself a bad thing, but the absence of robust career tracking data, limited engagement with non-academic sectors, and a lack of structured support for diverse pathways mean that institutions risk making decisions in a vacuum.

    Without a clear understanding of where researchers go and what they need to thrive, researcher development may become misaligned with market realities – undermining both retention and outcomes. Initiatives like CRAC-Vitae’s new UK research career tracking initiative aim to close this critical evidence gap.

    What makes researcher development sustainable?

    What will actually make researcher development sustainable? The answer isn’t simply more initiatives, or cheaper ones – it’s about embedding development in institutional culture and building on evidence of what works. That means making time for development activities, creating space for strategic reflection, and encouraging researchers to learn from one another – not just offering mentoring or reciprocal schemes in isolation. Vitae’s refreshed Researcher Development Framework sets out the full breadth of what this encompasses.

    Researcher development doesn’t necessarily require large budgets. Much of it comes down to embedding development in the culture: time to pursue meaningful opportunities, support from line managers and supervisors to do so, and the ability to learn in community with others. Yet in times of crisis, workloads tend to rise – and it’s often this development time that’s seen as non-essential and cut. Around half of research staff do not have time to invest in professional development – demonstrating just how limited that space already is.

    These overlapping pressures are pushing institutions to make trade-offs – but it’s clear that the most effective and sustainable approaches to researcher development will depend not just on resource levels, but on institutional priorities and strategic leadership.

    Unmet expectations

    At the same time, the ongoing review of sector-wide concordats and agreements, meant to clarify priorities and improve alignment, seems to have stalled – raising concerns about whether it will lead to meaningful action. The Researcher Development Concordat Strategy Group, tasked with overseeing implementation and strategic coordination, has also been quiet over the last year, though the new chair has recently signalled renewed commitment to its activities.

    This stagnation raises questions about the long-term value of the concordat, particularly in a landscape where institutions are grappling with resource constraints. Without strong leadership and coordinated sector-wide action, there is a real risk that institutions will continue to take a fragmented, compliance-driven approach rather than pursuing deeper reform.

    If the concordat is to remain relevant, it must address the structural issues it currently skirts around – particularly those related to researcher employment conditions, workload sustainability, and career progression. Without this, it risks becoming another well-intentioned initiative that falls short of delivering real sector-wide change.

    PCE and the concordat

    The introduction of people, culture and environment (PCE) in REF 2029 was intended to shift the sector’s focus from research outputs to the broader conditions that enable research excellence. However, the way institutions interpret these requirements is critical.

    REF PCE has the potential to drive meaningful change – but only if institutions use it as a platform for genuine reflection rather than a showcase of best practices.

    PCE and the concordat share several ambitions: both emphasise inclusive research environments, professional development, and supporting leadership at all career stages. The concordat’s focus on employment conditions, researcher voice, and long-term career development also aligns with PCE’s emphasis on institutional responsibility for research culture.

    This coherence is no accident – PCE was co-developed with the sector, and the concordats and agreements review recognised the overlaps between existing frameworks.

    If institutions take a strategic, integrated approach, REF PCE could reinforce and enhance existing concordat commitments rather than becoming another compliance exercise. However, this requires institutions to go beyond superficial reporting and demonstrate tangible improvements in the working conditions and career pathways of researchers.

    A call to action

    If institutions want to move beyond just ticking boxes, they need to take bold, practical steps.

    Job security must be redefined in the current climate. Researcher development should not just focus on career skills and knowledge but on career sustainability, accountability, and agility. While reducing reliance on fixed-term contracts remains a long-term goal, immediate priorities must also include clearer career progression routes (within and beyond higher education), cross-sector mobility, and support for career transitions.

    Workload and pay transparency need urgent attention. As researchers face increasing uncertainty about their career trajectories, solutions must go beyond surface-level fixes. This requires coordinated policy reform at both institutional and sector levels, including meaningful workload management strategies, transparent pay equity audits, and governance processes that embed researcher voices. While wellbeing initiatives have value, they are not a substitute for structural reform.

    Finally, the role of the concordat strategy group must evolve in response to the current climate. With institutions facing severe financial constraints and a shrinking research workforce, the group must take a more proactive role in advocating for sustainable researcher careers. This includes setting clearer expectations for institutions, addressing gaps in employment stability, and ensuring that commitments to researcher development are not lost amid cost-cutting measures. Without stronger leadership at the sector level, there is a risk that the concordat will become little more than a bureaucratic exercise, rather than a meaningful driver of change.

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  • UKRI has too many people telling it what to do without the resources to do what it’s told

    UKRI has too many people telling it what to do without the resources to do what it’s told

    UKRI has a massive job.

    As the National Audit Office’s (NAO) new report sets out in 2023–24 UKRI assessed close to 29,000 grant funding applications and spent £6bn on innovation grants. It featured in 105 policy papers across 13 ministerial departments in the last three years alone, and it has been seven years since the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) formally set out UKRI’s role and objectives.

    Scale

    The scale of UKRI’s work is so massive that according to its own estimates

    […] were it to receive a 2% budget increase each year for the following three financial years, its existing legal, statutory and political commitments would take up around 98% of its budget in 2025-26, 84% in 2026–27, and 74% in 2027–28. When also including investments that it considers critical, such as continuing to fund similar numbers of new doctoral students and similar levels of new curiosity-driven research, this would then take up around 103%, 101%, and 99% of its future budget, respectively, in those years

    The obvious question here is if UKRI has so much to do, if it is then compelled to do even more, how can it possibly change as government introduces new priorities. Whether it is moonshots, levelling up, supporting the industrial strategy, fuelling government missions, working with devolved authorities, or whatever comes next, UKRI’s funding is so committed it has little bandwidth to put its massive resources behind emerging government strategies.

    However, this assumes that UKRI has a clear idea of what it’s supposed to do in the first place.

    Roughly, UKRI has a corporate strategy which then informs its funding calls which institutions then bid for and through post award work UKRI then assures that the thing it set out to do is being done in some way. The NAO found that how government communicates its priorities to UKRI is a bewildering mix of things:

    ad hoc and routine meetings; board meetings; formal letters; key UK government strategies and mission statements; and spending review budgets. These are not consolidated or ranked, meaning that the government does not currently have an overall picture of what it is asking UKRI to do.

    It is therefore not surprising that in UKRI’s own strategy none of its formal objectives are “specific, measurable or time-bound, making it difficult to understand what outcome UKRI is seeking to achieve.”

    Priorities

    To the outside observer it would seem odd that UKRI doesn’t have a single ministerial letter with a single set of priorities which it can then pursue at the expense of everything else. Instead, in reading the NAO report it seems that UKRI has become the everything box where the entire hopes of a government are pinned, whether UKRI has the resources to achieve them or not.

    It’s easy to see how the research funding ecosystem becomes so complex. UKRI is an important part but it sits alongside the likes of ARIA, charitable organisations, national institutes, venture capital, businesses, and others. The bluntest assessment is that if the government is unable to specify a single set of aims for UKRI, UKRI then cannot measure outcomes as clearly as it would like – and even if it could there is little spare budget to pivot its work. The report makes clear that there is ongoing “prioritisation” to address this confusion – but this work will not conclude until after the spending review, by which point key decisions will already have been made.

    It’s not that UKRI is failing – by any reasonable assessment it is powering a world-leading research ecosystem, even with some deep cultural challenges – it’s that as NAO point out it is given a lot to do without all the tools to do it, and even when it can measure its work government priorities are liable to change anyway. The one thing that good research and innovation policy needs is time. The one thing every government has is little time to get anything done.

    It is even harder to assess whether its measurable things are good value on their own terms. NAO is interested in ensuring the public gets value for money in the things it funds. One of the challenges in assessing whether what UKRI does is good value for money is that outcomes from research and innovation funding are diffuse, happen on a long-time scale, and may even fail but in doing so moves the research ecosystem toward something that works in some hard to measure and adjacent way.

    Value

    Although not directly captured within the NAO report, assessing value for money within research and innovation also depends on which level it is assessed. For example, there may be investments in breakthrough science which return little direct economic benefits but expand the knowledge of a field in a way they one day might. There may be investments that achieve immediate economic benefits but have few long term economic benefits as new technologies become available.

    It is clear that UKRI would benefit from fewer directions and fewer priorities which would allow it to use its resources more efficiently and in turn measure its impact more easily. The problem is that government policy overtakes bureaucratic needs which in turn encourages policy churn.

    In lieu of being able to change the nature of politics part of the solution must lie in changing how UKRI works. The organisation is aware of this, and realises it needs a capacity which goes beyond adjusting the direction of its existing activities – rather, one that “incentivises applicants to put forward ideas that align with government objectives which can be quicker and more efficient than setting up new programmes.”

    The fundamental problem for policy makers is that they have collectively turned to UKRI with an enormous list of asks without the resources to achieve them. UKRI either needs clearer direction or more resources, or both, what it does not need is more asks without clear priorities.

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  • 43% of England’s universities face deficits

    43% of England’s universities face deficits

    The latest report from the Office for Students (OfS) paints a stark picture of mounting financial pressures across the higher education sector.

    The analysis suggests that 43% of institutions now forecast a deficit for 2024/25, in contrast with optimistic projections made by institutions that had looked to an improvement in financial performance for the year.

    The key driver is lower-than-expected international student recruitment, according to Philippa Pickford, director of regulation at the OfS.

    “Our independent analysis, drawn from data institutions have submitted, once again starkly sets out the challenges facing the sector. The sector is forecasting a third consecutive year of decline in financial performance, with more than four in ten institutions expecting a deficit this year,” she said.

    “We remain concerned that predictions of future growth are often based on ambitious student recruitment that cannot be achieved for every institution. Our analysis shows that if the number of student entrants is lower than forecast in the coming years, the sector’s financial performance could continue to deteriorate, leaving more institutions facing significant financial challenges,” said Pickford.

    We remain concerned that predictions of future growth are often based on ambitious student recruitment that cannot be achieved for every institution
    Philippa Pickford, Office for Students

    Total forecasts continue to predict growth of 26% in UK student entrants and 19.5% in international student entrants between 2023/24 and 2027/28. However, in its report, the OfS said that “at an aggregate level, providers’ forecasts for recruitment growth continue to be too ambitious”.

    Speaking to The PIE News on the topic, David Pilsbury, secretary to the International Higher Education Commission (IHEC), said that university target setting is, and has been for many years, “disconnected from reality”.

    “There are not enough people that really know what their recruitment potential really is and how to deliver it, not enough people who push back on finance directors and university executive groups that see overseas recruitment as a tap that can simply be turned on to fill the funding gap, and not enough people developing the compelling business cases that put in place the infrastructure necessary to deliver outcomes,” he said.

    IHEC recently released a landmark report urging action across several areas of UK higher education, including international student recruitment.

    Pilsbury described the need to build “coalitions of the willing” between universities and with private providers – of data, admissions services, recruitment and beyond – to drive innovation, execute new models and establish different outcomes for the UK sector. The IHEC report warned that “failing to secure the future of international higher education in the UK would be an act of national self-harm”.

    Data for 2023/24 from the UK’s Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) reflects the uncertain environment for international students lately, caused by tightened dependant rules, uncertainty about the UK’s Graduate Route and unwelcoming messaging from the previous Conservative government. 

    Total international student enrolment in the UK fell from 760,000 in 2022/23 to 730,000 last year. Currency devaluations in markets such as Nigeria and Ghana contributed to the decline, with Nigerian student levels dropping most dramatically by 23%. 

    Pickford does not expect to see multiple university closures in the short-term, but said that the “medium-term pressures are significant, complex and ongoing”.

    “Many institutions are working hard to reduce costs. This often requires taking difficult decisions, but doing so now will help secure institutions’ financial health for the long term. This work should continue to be done in a way that maintains course quality and ensures effective support for students,” she said.

    “Universities and colleges should also continue to explore opportunities for growth to achieve long-term sustainability. But some superficially attractive options, such as rapid growth in subcontractual partnerships, require caution,” Pickford warned.

    Against a challenging operating environment, the OfS said it welcomes the work of Universities UK’s taskforce on efficiency and transformation.

    The taskforce was announced earlier this year and was set up to drive efficiency and cost-saving across universities in England through collaborative solutions, including the exploration of mergers and acquisitions.

    The report comes as UK stakeholders brace for the government’s imminent immigration white paper which is expected to include restrictions on visas from some countries and also changes to the Graduate Route.

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  • A Michigan research professor explains how NIH funding works − and what it means to suddenly lose a grant – Campus Review

    A Michigan research professor explains how NIH funding works − and what it means to suddenly lose a grant – Campus Review

    In its first 100 days, the Trump administration has terminated more than US$2 billion in federal grants, according to a public source database compiled by the scientific community, and it is proposing additional cuts that would reduce the $47 billion budget of the US National Institutes of Health, also known as the NIH, by nearly half.

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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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  • Balls to left, Willetts to the right, creates an industrial strategy with a gaping hole for universities

    Balls to left, Willetts to the right, creates an industrial strategy with a gaping hole for universities

    Denizens of public service reform former Shadow Chancellor, Ed Balls, and former Universities Minister, David Willetts, have reignited the debates of 00s with new arguments on when government should intervene in the economy.

    In two recent papers, one authored by Willetts alone, and one by Dan Turner, Huw Spencer, Julia Pamilih, Vidit Doshi, and Ed Balls, two different versions of industrial strategies emerge. For Willetts, taking on the industrial strategy directly, there is a world of gently incentivising universities to align their fundamentals with an industrial strategy which picks some good areas to invest in if not winners . For Balls, addressing the industrial strategy via Bidenomics, there is a bazooka of more funding, support, and investment, to break the economy from its malaise, with far more far-reaching consequences for universities.

    Survivor

    Balls and Willetts are interesting messengers for new industrial policy. Back in 2014 Balls delivered a speech to London Business School entitled Beyond the Third Way. In it he argued that

    After the debacle of British Leyland in the 1970s, ‘industrial policy’ have been dirty words in Britain. Some remain cautious about the politics of ‘picking winners’ – but that misses the lesson of the 1970s. Back then, it was the industrial losers who did the picking and good money was poured after bad.

    His argument, albeit oddly worded, was that industrial strategies had focussed on the industries that were already in terminal decline. For him, industrial strategies had not been maps to the future but buckets to bailout the important but failing industries of the past.

    Willetts was even more pugnacious still. Back in 2013 he was not willing to cede that the government should back winners, that would be too much like the economic blunders of the 1980s, but that

    Focusing on R&D and on particular technologies is not the same as picking winners, which notoriously became losers picking the pockets of tax payers. It is not backing particular businesses. Instead we are focusing on big general purpose technologies. Each one has implications potentially so significant that they stretch way beyond any one particular industrial sector. Information Technology has transformed retailing for example. Satellite services could deliver precision agriculture.

    At the time, Balls gave barely a mention to universities beyond noting that the UK’s educated workforce struggled to find jobs to meet their qualifications. Willetts, in a style familiar to anyone following industrial policy, mentioned universities mostly (albeit not exclusively) as tools to promote wider policy objectives not instruments in their own right.

    Fast forward a decade or so and a lot has changed.

    Frosted tips

    In his latest piece for the Resolution Foundation, How to do industrial strategy, Willetts has a clear view of what an industrial strategy is. It’s not about picking winners but about picking some obvious areas of strength for investment while freeing up some capacity to allow industries to strike their own sector deals. The strategy should not necessarily be about new money but about marshalling resources around industries for example opening up supply chains, easing procurement routes, and management training.

    It is in Willetts’ views of the relationships between industrial strategy and higher education where things get really interesting. He is cognisant of the sometime disconnect between university education and skills needs and writes that

    The University of Sunderland runs automotive engineering course directly serving the automotive facilities nearby. Some universities include in their degree programmes elements specifically designed with local business requirements in mind. The Government’s new entity, Skills England, should help promote these.

    The Vice Chancellor of the University of Sunderland is now of course the Vice Chair of Skills England. However, it is interesting that for all of the fanfare of skills England the level of intervention he proposes is to promote these industrial links. He does not advocate for greater interventions by government nor employers. He promotes the idea of kitemarks for programmes aligned to industrial priorities, more funding competitions for business schools, and Centres for Doctoral Training co-funded with business.

    It is not surprising that the man who invented much of the current higher education architecture does not call for its complete reform but his proposals seem modest given the ongoing economic collapse the country is enduring.

    However, Willetts is perturbed by absence of universities from the industrial strategy green paper which he describes as “very odd”. His advice here is to encourage greater incubation of university start-ups, remove the numbers of spin-outs as a measure of success to discourage their premature release, and get universities to reduce their stakes in spin-outs. Again, all entirely sensible but not very large for the enormous challenges ahead. His more radical idea, innovation vouchers to support businesses to use university expertise, is a rehash of ideas that have been used across the UK including in Dundee to bring together businesses and academics around gaming. The trick is not to issue these vouchers generally but to target them at businesses with latent potential, where there are regional strengths, and commensurate university expertise.

    Destiny’s Child

    And this opens up a fundamental tension which Balls’ paper tries to address. Whether an industrial strategy is primarily about economic growth of the country or regions, investment in leading or latent assets, and how far the government should intervene. In a co authored paper, What should the UK learn from Bidenomics, Balls et al imagine the forthcoming industrial strategy as an opportunity to ruthlessly focus on the things that are strategic for the future of the UK’s economy. As they conclude in their paper

    With clear goals in place, the toolkit of the Industrial Strategy should then seek to minimise the risk of capture by incumbent firms. That means using rules-based mechanisms like tax credits to realise clear growth objectives, crowding in private investment through public incentives, while resisting the pressure to reduce competition or favour incumbents.

    Their view is the goal is not to ease the path for winners but to pick a few priority areas and support them with general levers of support that would benefit a range of firms. One of the lessons from Bidenomics is that their industrial policy succeeded on the basis that it was massive with $108bn of investment in energy deals alone. Balls and his co-authors highlight the need to support and expand areas of existing economic strength, this includes universities and spending outside of the golden triangle.

    On the face of it the Balls proposition is more appealing. The basis of his argument would seem to be that if the government simultaneously invests in its leading assets while encouraging competition it can grab the best of both worlds. A more dynamic economy with more funding for the leading assets. The challenge is, as the paper acknowledges, the economic success of Bidenomics was also predicated on an appetite to allow creative destruction. Allowing zombie firms to die and workers to be made redundant and moved to more productive parts of the economy in order for the economy to grow. The paper refers to labour market churn and new business formation as the secret sauce “which appears to have contributed to higher productivity, stronger job creation, and faster growth.”

    Blockbuster

    Any decision ever to make any public investment implies winners and losers. The real debate is the extent to which the government should back those winners.

    The Willetts view of the world would see universities broadly fulfilling the same role they do now with a bit of new funding for collaboration. The more challenging view by Balls and his colleagues is that economic dynamism is inherently linked to creating and destroying more business and labour market churn. This would not only mean that universities would have to adapt more rapidly in their kinds of labour market work, skills training, CPD, KTPs and so on. It would also mean that they may also find themselves in urgent need of yet another political narrative, levelling up, securonomics, whatever next, in an ever changing policy landscape.

    The challenge that has yet to be fixed in any industrial strategy is regional inequality. Even America with all of its economic levers to pull still has many places that have been “hollowed out” with a mixed record of turning things round through public investment. Any university that can play a distinct role in this puzzle is likely not only to win the favour of the government but solve one of the biggest impediments to the UK’s productivity, and by proxy the quality of life of its people.

    The Balls view of industrial strategy as a tool for economic dynamism, the Willetts view of industrial strategy as a tool for reorientating government and reorganising bits of the economy, may both lose out to a Chancellor who may feel she has little fiscal headroom to make dramatic economic interventions. For universities, the opportunity is to define their role in the government’s central economic policy, if they do not their role will be defined for them.

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  • Editorial: 60 Years of the Society for Research into Higher Education

    Editorial: 60 Years of the Society for Research into Higher Education

    by Rob Cuthbert

    Yesterday

    Issue No 60 of SRHE News appears by happy coincidence in the 60th year since the Society for Research into Higher Education was established (“all my troubles seemed so far away”). Reminiscences can often be reinforced by the musical soundtrack of the time, as ours will be. Many readers of SRHE News and Blog weren’t born in 1965, but let’s not allow such small obstacles to deflect us, when everybody knows the tunes anyway. Here are a few reminders of how things were 60 years ago, in 1965.

    (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction

    As the Rolling Stones sang: “I tried, and I tried, and I tried and I tried, I can’t get no satisfaction”, the message resonated with 30,000 potential HE students who could not get admitted to higher education in UK universities in 1965, with only 50,000 places available. Only about 4% of the rising cohort of 18 year olds won admission to the 25 universities in existence in 1965. Most people left school at 15; the school-leaving age was only raised to 16 in 1971.

    The Robbins Report two years earlier had punctuated, but not initiated, the accelerating expansion of demand and need for more higher education, reflected in the 1960s with the creation of the new plateglass universities, including Kent and Warwick in 1965. Robbins had proposed a new breed of scientific and technological universities but these were not established; development relied instead on the organic growth and expansion of the colleges already in existence. That growth was significantly helped and supported by the new Council for National Academic Awards (CNAA), created in 1965 to begin the validation of degree courses outside universities.

    In a Parliamentary debate in December 1965 Lord Robbins aimed to set at rest the ‘more means worse’ argument championed by Kingsley Amis:

    “On the occasion of our last debate, the two leading issues discussed were the question of numbers and the question of the machinery of government. On the first of these issues, whether the expansion proposed by the Committee on Higher Education involved a lowering of entry standards, I think it may be said that discussion is at an end. Even The Times newspaper, which is not over-given to retraction, has had to admit that its accusations in this respect rested on misapprehension; 1250 and the latest figures of qualified persons coming forward show, without a doubt, what our Committee always emphasised: that its estimates were on the low side rather than on the high.”

    Continuing rapid expansion allowed more and more 18-year-olds to join: “I’m in with the in-crowd, I go where the in-crowd goes”. This was before fees; students had grants they didn’t have to repay, with their real value still rising (they peaked in 1968): boomers could happily sing with The Who about My Generation.

     We Can Work It Out

    The non-university colleges would first become polytechnics, following the 1966 White Paper A Plan for Polytechnics and Other Colleges, written by civil servant Toby Weaver. Secretary of State for Education Tony Crosland promoted the new policy idea of the binary system (“Try to see it my way”) in his seminal Woolwich speech in April 1965, but Crosland had been mainly occupied with the comprehensivisation of secondary schools. DES Circular 10/65 was the first of a series which dealt with the issue of comprehensivisation, as Harold Wilson’s Labour government asked local education authorities to submit plans for reorganising their schools on comprehensive lines. It was the first major schools reform since Butler’s 1944 Education Act under Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who died in 1965.

    Expansion of HE was substantially driven by the colleges, still very much part of the local authority sector. The polytechnics would increasingly chafe at the bureaucratic controls of local authorities but it would be more than 20 years before the 1988 Education Reform Act ripped the polytechnics out of the local authority sector. In 1965 the replacement of the London County Council by the Greater London Council was big news for the expanding HE sector, especially because it entailed the creation of the Inner London Education Authority, responsible for no fewer than five of the 30 polytechnics, and a range of other specialist HE institutions. Nowadays that kind of restructuring would barely merit a mention in Times Higher Education, which itself was not even a glint in the eye of Brian Macarthur, the first editor of the Times Higher Education Supplement, not launched until 1971.

    I Can’t Explain

    The colleges to become polytechnics would soon be calling for ‘parity of esteem’ (“Got a feeling inside – can’t explain”). Although ‘poly’ would eventually be replaced in the vernacular by the execrable but inescapable ‘uni’, some features of the HE system proved extremely persistent. League tables had not yet made an appearance but would soon become not only persistent but pernicious. Some things, like HE hierarchies of esteem, seem to be always with us, just as Frank Herbert’s mediocre scifi novel Dune, first published in 1965, has recently seen yet another movie remake.

    A World of Our Own

    In contrast David Lodge, professor of English Literature at Birmingham University, would go from strength to strength, writing about what he knew best – “we’ll live in a world of our own”. 1965 was before his campus trilogy, rated by some as the best novels ever about university life, but in 1965 he did write about a PhD student, in The British Museum Is Falling Down. In the same year Philip Larkin, still only halfway through his twenty years’ service as Librarian at the University of Hull, was awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry.

    It’s Not Unusual

    For those whose memory is punctuated by sporting events there was still a year to wait before England’s triumph in the football World Cup, which sadly was unusual, indeed unique. A more usual hierarchy of football esteem began in 1965 with Liverpool’s first ever win in the FA Cup, and an era ended with Stanley Matthews’ final game in the English First Division. Tom Jones began his own era of success in 1965 with his first No 1 hit, It’s Not Unusual.

    Eve of Destruction?

    US president Lyndon Johnson announced the Great Society in his State of the Union address in January 1965, but Martin Luther King marched in Selma and  Montgomery. The first American troops arrived in Vietnam, and a Students for a Democratic Society demonstration against the war drew 25,000 people in Washington. Student protests, too, are always with us (”The Eastern world, it is exploding”).

    How sweet it is

    Dorothy Hodgkin had won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry just a year earlier, and in 1965 she was made a member of the Order of Merit. The Social Science Research Council was established in 1965. It was later renamed the Economic and Social Research Council in an early skirmish in the culture wars, precipitated by Keith Joseph as Education Secretary under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher – who had been taught by Dorothy Hodgkin at Somerville College, Oxford.

    Act naturally

    The field of research into higher education was sparsely populated in 1965, but for the founders of the Society for Research into Higher Education it was a natural development to come together. The learned society they created has, in the 60 years since then, grown into an internationally-oriented group of researchers, dedicated to every kind of research into a global HE system which could scarcely have been dreamed of, but would surely have been celebrated, by SRHE’s founders. Let’s hang on, to what we’ve got.

    The Society has planned a range of activities to celebrate its platinum anniversary, including a series of blogs reflecting on changes to higher education during those 60 years. If you would like to contribute to the series (Help! I need somebody) please contact [email protected].

    Rob Cuthbert is editor of SRHE News and the SRHE Blog, Emeritus Professor of Higher Education Management, University of the West of England and Joint Managing Partner, Practical Academics. Email [email protected]. Twitter/X @RobCuthbert.

    Author: SRHE News Blog

    An international learned society, concerned with supporting research and researchers into Higher Education

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  • How our researchers are using AI – and what we can do to support them

    How our researchers are using AI – and what we can do to support them

    We know that the use of generative AI in research is now ubiquitous. But universities have limited understanding of who is using large language models in their research, how they are doing so, and what opportunities and risks this throws up.

    The University of Edinburgh hosts the UK’s first, and largest, group of AI expertise – so naturally, we wanted to find out how AI is being used. We asked our three colleges to check in on how their researchers were using generative AI, to inform what support we provide, and how.

    Using AI in research

    The most widespread use, as we would expect, was to support communication: editing, summarising and translating texts or multimedia. AI is helping many of our researchers to correct language, improve clarity and succinctness, and transpose text to new mediums including visualisations.

    Our researchers are increasingly using generative AI for retrieval: identifying, sourcing and classifying data of different kinds. This may involve using large language models to identify and compile datasets, bibliographies, or to carry out preliminary evidence syntheses or literature reviews.

    Many are also using AI to conduct data analysis for research. Often this involves developing protocols to analyse large data sets. It can also involve more open searches, with large language models detecting new correlations between variables, and using machine learning to refine their own protocols. AI can also test complex models or simulations (digital twins), or produce synthetic data. And it can produce new models or hypotheses for testing.

    AI is of course evolving fast, and we are seeing the emergence of more niche and discipline-specific tools. For example, self taught reasoning models (STaRs) can generate rationales that can be fine-tuned to answer a range of research questions. Or retrieval augmented generation (RAG) can enable large language models to access external data that enhances the breadth and accuracy of their outputs.

    Across these types of use, AI can improve communication and significantly save time. But it also poses significant risks, which our researchers were generally alert to. These involve well-known problems with accuracy, bias and confabulation – especially where researchers use AI to identify new (rather than test existing) patterns, to extrapolate, or to underpin decision-making. There are also clear risks around sharing of intellectual property with large language models. And not least, researchers need to clearly attribute the use of AI in their research outputs.

    The regulatory environment is also complex. While the UK does not as yet have formal AI legislation, many UK and international funders have adopted guidelines and rules. For example, the European Union has a new AI Act, and EU funded projects need to comply with European Commission guidelines on AI.

    Supporting responsible AI

    Our survey has given us a steer on how best to support and manage the use of AI in research – leading us to double down on four areas that require particular support:

    Training. Not surprisingly the use of generative AI is far more prevalent among early career researchers. This raises issues around training, supervision and oversight. Our early career researchers need mentoring and peer support. But more senior researchers don’t necessarily have the capacity to keep pace with the rapid evolution of AI applications.

    This suggests the need for flexible training opportunities. We have rolled out a range of courses, including three new basic AI courses to get researchers started in the responsible use of AI in research, and online courses on ethics of AI.

    We are also ensuring our researchers can share peer support. We have set up an AI Adoption Hub, and are developing communities of practice in key areas of AI research – notably research in AI and Health which is one of the most active areas of AI research. A similar initiative is being developed for AI and Sustainability.

    Data safety. Our researchers are rightly concerned about feeding their data into large language models, given complex challenges around copyright and attribution. For this reason, the university has established its own interface with the main open source large language models including ChatGPT – the Edinburgh Language Model (ELM). ELM provides safer access to large language model, operating under a “zero data retention” agreement so that data is not retained by Open AI. We are encouraging our researchers to develop their own application programming interfaces (APIs), which allow them to provide more specific instructions to enhance their results.

    Ethics. AI in research throws up a range of challenges around ethics and integrity. Our major project on responsible AI, BRAID, and ethics training by the Institute for Academic Development, provide expertise on how we adapt and apply our ethics processes to address the challenges. We also provide an AI Impact Assessment tool to help researchers work through the potential ethical and safety risks in using AI.

    Research culture. The use of AI is ushering in a major shift in how we conduct research, raising fundamental questions about research integrity. When used well, generative AI can make researchers more productive and effective, freeing time to focus on those aspects of research that require critical thinking and creativity. But they also create incentives to take short cuts that can compromise the rigour, accuracy and quality of research. For this reason, we need a laser focus on quality over quantity.

    Groundbreaking research is not done quickly, and the most successful researchers do not churn out large volumes of papers – the key is to take time to produce robust, rigorous and innovative research. This is a message that will be strongly built into our renewed 2026 Research Cultures Action Plan.

    AI is helping our researchers drive important advances that will benefit society and the environment. It is imperative that we tap the opportunities of AI, while avoiding some of the often imperceptible risks in its mis-use. To this end, we have decided to make AI a core part of our Research and Innovation Strategy – ensuring we have the right training, safety and ethical standards, and research culture to harness the opportunities of this exciting technology in an enabling and responsible way.

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  • Data shows growing GenAI adoption in K-12

    Data shows growing GenAI adoption in K-12

    Key points:

    • K-12 GenAI adoption rates have grown–but so have concerns 
    • A new era for teachers as AI disrupts instruction
    • With AI coaching, a math platform helps students tackle tough concepts
    • For more news on GenAI, visit eSN’s AI in Education hub

    Almost 3 in 5 K-12 educators (55 percent) have positive perceptions about GenAI, despite concerns and perceived risks in its adoption, according to updated data from Cengage Group’s “AI in Education” research series, which regularly evaluates AI’s impact on education.  

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    In the year 2025, no one should have to be convinced that protecting data privacy matters. For education institutions, it’s really that simple of a priority–and that complicated.

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    Want to share a great resource? Let us know at [email protected].

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