Tag: research

China Research Spending Outstrips U.S. Despite Faltering Economy

China continues to prioritize research and development despite the country’s slowing economy, with the drive for scientific self-sufficiency superseding economic development alone, according to analysts.

Recent figures from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development show China’s R&D spending grew at a faster rate in 2023 than it did in both the U.S. and E.U., as well as all OECD member states.

Growth in China reached 8.7 percent, compared with 1.7 percent in the U.S. and 1.6 percent in the E.U.

According to China’s National Bureau of Statistics, spending continued to increase in 2024, exceeding 3.6 trillion yuan ($489.9 billion) and up 8.3 percent year on year. This accounted for 2.68 percent of China’s gross domestic product in 2024, up 0.1 percentage point from the previous year.

It comes despite China’s wider economic slowdown, triggered in part by the collapse of the real estate sector in 2021, which is still struggling to recover.

Given these financial concerns, the growth in research spending is “quite a feat” and “an important indicator of where China is putting its priorities,” said Jeroen Groenewegen-Lau, head of the science, technology and innovation program at the Mercator Institute for China Studies.

The Asian superpower also now has to contend with the export tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump. However, analysts expect that R&D spending will continue to grow in spite of these economic barriers.

“When you look at some of the Asian economies, they tend to be countercyclical in their investment in research,” said Caroline Wagner, a professor specializing in public policy and science at Ohio State University. “When economies slow, they actually increase their spending on research.”

She said this is true of Japan and South Korea, which both exceeded the OECD average with growth of 2.7 percent and 3.7 percent in 2023 respectively.

“When they’re experiencing a little bit of a downturn, they actually spend more on research in the hopes that it will stoke the economy,” Wagner added.

Groenewegen-Lau agreed that China’s growth trajectory looks set to continue, with investment in basic research core to the country’s national development strategy.

“Even if the economy is not going very well, they can keep up this expenditure,” he said. “They’re kind of borrowing from the future” to “conquer all these technological bottlenecks.”

He continued, “It’s clear that science technology is maybe even more important than economic development in its own right. It’s like the economic development seems sometimes to be supporting the innovation machine.”

While these figures are made up of both government and corporate expenditure, there are concerns among China’s leaders that businesses aren’t investing as much as they should, particularly in basic research, according to Groenewegen-Lau.

“The current economic situation is such that we know that they’re investing less,” Groenewegen-Lau said. “So the central government is trying to make up for that.”

Universities and research institutes are likely to benefit from this, with investment in the sector rising.

In 2024, expenditure by China’s higher education institutes on R&D reached 275.33 billion yuan ($37.68 billion), an increase of 14.1 percent from the previous year. However, this still accounted for a minority of total expenditure, with HEIs making up 8.2 percent of the total, compared with enterprises, which made up 77.7 percent.

And, as China moves away from international engagement and toward self-sufficiency, a key challenge, said Wagner, will be ensuring it has the talent capabilities to go it alone.

“They have really been working on an imitative model, where they’re connecting with and imitating leaders, and now they’re trying to pull back and say, ‘We’re going to build our own national capacity,’ but you have to have enough [human] capacity in order to do that,” Wagner said.

“I think that’s one of the questions that is maybe still out there unanswered. Can you do that on your own?”

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April 17, 2025
Institute of Education Sciences cuts imperil high-quality research, lawsuits allege
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Dive Brief:
- “Dramatic, unreasoned, and unlawful actions” taken by the Trump administration to significantly downsize the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences are making it impossible to carry out education research, according to a lawsuit filed Tuesday by the American Educational Research Association and the Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness.
- The funding and staffing cuts made to IES will hamper the institute’s ability to conduct impartial, high-quality research and share those findings with educators, researchers and policymakers, according to the federal lawsuit, which was filed in Maryland district court.
- With this legal challenge, the pushback against the Trump administration’s actions to reduce the size of the federal government continues to grow. Another lawsuit disputing IES shrinkage was filed by the Association for Education Finance and Policy and the Institute for Higher Education Policy on April 4 in federal court in Washington, D.C.
Dive Insight:

Both lawsuits say the the Trump administration’s actions are preventing IES from carrying out its statutory duties. They ask that U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon and the Education Department end their efforts to eliminate IES and restore its contracts, staff and other resources.

The Education Department did not respond to request for comment on Wednesday.

The challenge by AERA and SREE, which are represented in the lawsuit by Democracy Forward, a national legal organization, calls the February cancellation of $881 million in education research grants and the March 11 termination of 90% of IES staff “arbitrary” and “capricious” and a violation of the Administrative Procedure Act.

Only about 20 staff remain at IES, and only three people are still employed at the National Center for Education Statistics, which is one of four centers within IES, according to the AERA-SREE lawsuit.

NCES and its predecessor organizations have focused on data collection and analysis for more than 150 years. NCES’ demise will make it “impossible to track progress, assess learning, identify gaps affecting students, and set priorities for attention over time and across the country,” including for student proficiency trends from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, also known as the Nation’s Report Card, the complaint said.

The AEFP-IHEP lawsuit adds that Congress has not repealed the Education Sciences Reform Act or eliminated statutory mandates that require IES to collect and analyze data, support research on specific topics, and provide access to research and data to the public. The organizations are represented in the lawsuit by Public Citizen Litigation Group, a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization.

Michal Kurlaender, president of AEFP, said in an April 4 statement that many of its members have “faced serious challenges to their research and work” because of the IES funding and staffing cuts.

“We want to do all that we can to protect essential data and research infrastructure,” Kurlaender said. “This is fundamental to our mission of promoting research and partnerships that can inform education policy and improve education outcomes.”
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April 16, 2025
U of Washington Research Coordinators, Consultants Unionize

More than 700 University of Washington research coordinators and consultants have unionized, joining already organized research scientists and engineers there to create a bargaining unit more than 2,000 members strong, the union announced.

UAW 4121 said in a news release Tuesday that research coordinators and consultants are largely health-care professionals focused on research.

“They are responsible for running clinical trials, liaising with patients and scientists, and ensuring that research results are grounded in rigorous science,” the release said. “Despite the critical role they play at the university, many report job insecurity, a lack of transparency around career advancement and workload, low compensation relative to cost of living, and more as their reasons for forming a union.”

“The University of Washington recognizes and respects the right of employees to organize,” university spokesperson Victor Balta wrote in an email to Inside Higher Ed. “UW values the research coordinators and consultants who help make vital work possible and we look forward to negotiating in good faith their inclusion into the existing UAW 4121 bargaining unit of research scientists and research engineers.”

Mike Sellars, executive director of Washington State’s Public Employment Relations Commission, said his agency certified the unionization of the research coordinators and consultants Thursday. Nearly 400 employees submitted cards in favor of unionizing. A union spokesperson said cards were collected over the past year.

Mike Miller, director of UAW Region 6, said in the news release, “As workers and workers rights’ are under assault by the Trump administration, it’s never been more important to have the rights and protections of a union.”

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April 2, 2025
Charles Darwin uni loses $200,000 US research funding – Campus Review

A research contract valued at about $200,000 has been lost by Charles Darwin University (CDU) as a result of US President Donald Trump’s “America First” agenda.

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April 2, 2025
Trump administration suspends dozens of Princeton University’s research grants

Federal agencies have suspended “several dozen” federal research grants to Princeton University, the Ivy League institution announced Tuesday. The move comes as the Trump administration attacks high-profile colleges over campus antisemitism allegations.

Multiple agencies, including the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. Department of Defense and NASA, notified the university of the freezes on Monday and Tuesday, Princeton President Chris Eisgruber said in a community message.

He noted that “the full rationale” for the agencies’ cancellation wasn’t clear yet but stated the university will comply with the law and is “committed to fighting antisemitism and all forms of discrimination, and we will cooperate with the government in combating antisemitism.”

He added that Princeton would at the same time “vigorously defend academic freedom and the due process rights.”

A reporter for The Daily Caller, a conservative outlet, reported late Monday that the Trump administration was pausing $210 million in funding to Princeton amid an ongoing campus antisemitism investigation.

The Education Department on Tuesday did not immediately respond to a request for confirmation of the pause.

Like many college campuses, Princeton saw significant protest activity last spring, including a hunger strike, an encampment lasting three weeks and over a dozen arrests. During that time, the Biden administration opened an investigation into the university after a complaint was filed by a conservative activist, who filed more than 30 similar complaints at U.S. educational institutions.

In March, the U.S. Department of Education under President Donald Trump named Princeton as one of 60 institutions that could face enforcement action over unaddressed antisemitism, though the agency didn’t specify any specific civil rights law violations.

The suspension of Princeton’s research grants is just the most recent of the Trump administration’s escalating financial attacks on colleges and the higher education sector.

On Monday, the administration announced it was reviewing billions of dollars in federal grants and contracts at Harvard University, another well-known institution mentioned on the Education Department’s March list.

Those moves come less than a month after the Trump administration canceled $400 million in research funding to Columbia University.

The Ivy League institution ceded to many of the government’s demands — including by adding three dozen security officers and appointing a senior vice provost to review its regional studies program. Late last month, the Trump administration called it “a positive first step in the university maintaining a financial relationship with the United States government.”

Following the weeks of turmoil at the university, Columbia Interim President Katrina Armstrong stepped down late last week after less than eight months.

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April 1, 2025
Why History Instruction is Critical for Combating Online Misinformation – The 74

Can you tell fact from fiction online? In a digital world, few questions are more important or more challenging.

For years, some commentators have called for K-12 teachers to take on fake news, media literacy, or online misinformation by doubling down on critical thinking. This push for schools to do a better job preparing young people to differentiate between low- and high-quality information often focuses on social studies classes.

As an education researcher and former high school history teacher, I know that there’s both good and bad news about combating misinformation in the classroom. History class can cultivate critical thinking – but only if teachers and schools understand what critical thinking really means.

Not just a ‘skill’

First, the bad news.

When people demand that schools teach critical thinking, it’s not always clear what they mean. Some might consider critical thinking a trait or capacity that teachers can encourage, like creativity or grit. They could believe that critical thinking is a mindset: a habit of being curious, skeptical and reflective. Or they might be referring to specific skills – for instance, that students should learn a set of steps to take to assess information online.

Unfortunately, cognitive science research has shown that critical thinking is not an abstract quality or practice that can be developed on its own. Cognitive scientists see critical thinking as a specific kind of reasoning that involves problem-solving and making sound judgments. It can be learned, but it relies on specific content knowledge and does not necessarily transfer between fields.

Early studies on chess players and physicists in the 1970s and ’80s helped show how the kind of flexible and reflective cognition often called critical thinking is really a product of expertise. Chess masters, for instance, do not start out with innate talent. In most cases, they gain expertise by hours of thoughtfully playing the game. This deliberate practice helps them recognize patterns and think in novel ways about chess. Chess masters’ critical thinking is a product of learning, not a precursor.

Because critical thinking develops in specific contexts, it does not necessarily transfer to other types of problem-solving. For example, chess advocates might hope the game improves players’ intelligence, and studies do suggest learning chess may help elementary students with the kind of pattern recognition they need for early math lessons. However, research has found that being a great chess player does not make people better at other kinds of complex critical thinking.

Historical thinking

Since context is key to critical thinking, learning to analyze information about current events likely requires knowledge about politics and history, as well as practice at scrutinizing sources. Fortunately, that is what social studies classes are for.

Social studies researchers often describe this kind of critical thinking as “historical thinking”: a way to evaluate evidence about the past and assess its reliability. My own research has shown that high school students can make relatively quick progress on some of the surface features of historical thinking, such as learning to check a text’s date and author. But the deep questioning involved in true historical thinking is much harder to learn.

Social studies classrooms can also build what researchers call “civic online reasoning.” Fact-checking is complex work. It is not enough to tell young people that they should be wary online, or to trust sites that end in “.org” instead of “.com.” Rather than learning general principles about online media, civic online reasoning teaches students specific skills for evaluating information about politics and social issues.

Still, learning to think like a historian does not necessarily prepare someone to be a skeptical news consumer. Indeed, a recent study found that professional historians performed worse than professional fact-checkers at identifying online misinformation. The misinformation tasks the historians struggled with focused on issues such as bullying or the minimum wage – areas where they possessed little expertise.

Powerful knowledge

That’s where background knowledge comes in – and the good news is that social studies can build it. All literacy relies on what readers already know. For people wading through political information and news, knowledge about history and civics is like a key in the ignition for their analytical skills.

Readers without much historical knowledge may miss clues that something isn’t right – signs that they need to scrutinize the source more closely. Political misinformation often weaponizes historical falsehoods, such as the debunked and recalled Christian nationalist book claiming that Thomas Jefferson did not believe in a separation of church and state, or claims that the nadir of African American life came during Reconstruction, not slavery. Those claims are extreme, but politicians and policymakers repeat them.

For someone who knows basic facts about American history, those claims won’t sit right. Background knowledge will trigger their skepticism and kick critical thinking into gear.

Past, present, future

For this reason, the best approach to media literacy will come through teaching that fosters concrete skills alongside historical knowledge. In short, the new knowledge crisis points to the importance of the traditional social studies classroom.

But it’s a tenuous moment for history education. The Bush- and Obama-era emphasis on math and English testing resulted in decreased instructional time in history classes, particularly in elementary and middle schools. In one 2005 study, 27% of schools reported reducing social studies time in favor of subjects on state exams.

Now, history teachers are feeling heat from politically motivated culture wars over education that target teaching about racism and LGBTQ+ issues and that ban books from libraries and classrooms. Two-thirds of instructors say that they’ve limited classroom discussions about social and political topics.

Attempts to limit students’ knowledge about the past imperil their chances of being able to think critically about new information. These attacks are not just assaults on the history of the country; they are attempts to control its future.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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March 29, 2025
Recruiting U.S. Scholars Can Protect “Threatened Research”

Universities should look to recruit researchers fleeing the U.S. amid dramatic funding cuts by the Trump administration because it could help protect vital scientific expertise from being lost, according to the rector of a leading Belgian university.

Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) has announced a host of new postdoctoral positions for international academics, stating that the institution “particularly welcomes excellent researchers currently working in the U.S. which see their line of research threatened.”

VUB and its sister university Université Libre de Bruxelles are offering a total of 36 grants to researchers with a maximum of eight years of postdoctoral experience, funded by the European Union’s Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions. The positions are not exclusively designed for U.S.-based researchers, VUB rector Jan Danckaert stressed, but are “open to all incoming researchers, whatever their nationality or their working place at the moment outside of Belgium.”

VUB chose to advertise the positions to scholars in the U.S., Danckaert explained, in the wake of drastic funding cuts by the Trump administration, with research fields under particular threat including climate, public health and any areas considered to be related to diversity.

“We also hear from colleagues in the United States that they are applying a kind of self-censorship in order to stay under the radar,” he said. “We believe that freedom of investigation is now under threat in the U.S.”

“It’s not so much about trying to attract the best US researchers to Brussels but trying to prevent fruitful lines of research from being abruptly cut off,” Danckaert said. While recruiting talent “would benefit our society,” he said, “it’s important that these lines of research can be continued without interruption, for the benefit of the scientific community as a whole and, in the end, for humanity.”

VUB has already lost U.S. funding for two research projects, one concerning youth and disinformation and the other addressing the “transatlantic dialogue,” Danckaert said. The grants, amounting to 50,000 euros ($53,800) each, were withdrawn because “they were no longer in line with policy priorities,” the rector said. “Now, we have some costs that will have to be covered, but that’s nothing in comparison to the millions that are being cut in the United States.”

European efforts to recruit U.S.-based researchers have faced some criticism, with the KU Leuven rector Luc Sels arguing that “almost half of the world population lives in countries where academic freedom is much more restricted,” while “the first and most important victims of Trump’s decisions”—such as the cancellation of USAID funding—“live and work in the Global South.”

“Should we not prioritise supporting the scientists most at risk?” Sels writes in a recent Times Higher Education comment piece, adding that “drawing [the U.S.’s] talented scientists away will not help them.”

Asked about these concerns, Danckaert said, “It’s true, of course, that the U.S. by no means has a monopoly on putting scientists under threat,” noting that VUB, alongside other Belgian universities, participates in academic sanctuary programs such as Scholars at Risk. “We try to provide a safe haven for scholars who are being persecuted in their countries, and this work doesn’t stop.”

As for fears of a potential brain drain from the U.S., the VUB rector said he was “by nature optimistic.” Recruiting U.S.-based researchers “is hopefully only a temporary measure to avoid some lines of research being abruptly cut,” Danckaert said.

“I believe this is a temporary difficult period for a number of scientists,” he continued. “We’ve always looked with high esteem to the quality of science done in the United States, and I’m confident that the climate in which science was prospering will come back.”

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March 28, 2025
Strengthening data and insights into our changing university research landscape by Jessica Corner

The UK continues as a global leader in research and innovation and our universities are uniquely strong contributors, among which are the highest performing in the world. We have some of the highest-intensity innovation ecosystems in the world, with universities as the core driver. As a country, our invention record is well recognised. The UK, with its powerful life sciences effort, delivered one of the first UK COVID-19 vaccines, saving millions of lives around the world and only possible because of long-standing investment in research that became serendipitously essential. In cities across the UK, universities act as pillar institutions with positive and reinforcing effects on their local economies. We have a rich network of specialist institutions that excel in music, the arts, medicine and life sciences. Our universities continue to deliver discoveries, technologies, creative insights, talent for our industries and public services and so much more. Many have the scale and reach to deliver across the full span of research and innovation to enterprise and commercialisation.

A unique feature, and underpinning this extraordinary record, is our dual support funding system. That system balances competitive grant funding from UKRI Research Councils, charities, business, and others with long-term stable underpinning funds to enable universities to pursue ambitious and necessary strategies, develop research strengths, foster talent, pivot towards new fields, collaborate and maintain research infrastructure.

However, the sector faces unprecedented challenges. Erosion of the value of student fees and the growing costs of delivering education, disruptions to anticipated income from international student fees, a slow erosion of the value of QR, rising costs of research and a mismatch between this and cost recovery from grants has created a perfect storm and unsustainable operating models for most institutions. The additional £5bn a year in funding from universities’ own surpluses towards research and innovation is no longer guaranteed. The sector has and continues to evolve in response to a changing landscape, but consideration is needed about how best to support the sector to change.

Research England’s role is to support a healthy, dynamic, diverse, and inclusive, research and innovation system in universities in England⁶. We work by facilitating and incentivising system coherence, acting as both champion and challenger. In partnership we aim to create and sustain the conditions for the system to continue delivering excellence and leverage resources far beyond funding provided by government. We are working to enhance the data and evidence to support our role as expert, evidence-based funder and on the outcomes that the funding delivers. In fulfilling this role and against the current context, Research England has two initiatives that we will be taking forward in the coming weeks.

Our ongoing programme to review the principles underpinning our funding and mechanisms by which we allocate research funds to institutions has reached a point where we are seeking to increase the visibility and transparency of how these funds are deployed by institutions. We are developing an approach, designed to be light touch and low burden that asks universities to report back on their use of strategic institutional research funding. We will begin testing the approach with a selection of institutions in the coming months and, subject to the outcomes of this initial engagement, aim to roll out a pilot with institutions in the 2025/26 academic year. We will be communicating to institutions directly about the pilot in the early Autumn. In the second phase of this work, we intend to work with institutions to develop a forward-looking strategic element that will give insight into plans and then how decisions are made about the deployment of funding. For the programme, we are also reviewing the effectiveness of the different unhypothecated and ring-fenced research funds provided to institutions. When fully implemented, the information we will acquire will enable Research England greater visibility of the role of institutions and the contribution of our formula-based research funding (including QR) to the research and innovation system while also contributing to efforts to have more systematic and timely data.

A second strand of work is our programme to monitor the implications for the sustainability of research in universities against the current financial context. We are seeking to better understand how challenges are impacting universities’ ability to deliver research and innovation and maintain research capabilities, capacity, and facilities and, in turn, further strengthen assurance with more robust data. In partnership with the Department for Innovation Science and Technology, we have commissioned the Innovation Research Caucus with OMB Research Ltd to undertake a survey into how institutions are responding to current pressures with respect to research and innovation. The survey will provide important data that can support advice to government and others on the extent of universities’ financial challenges, how these issues are being managed, and how this impacts their investment and planning in the research and innovation space. The approach is to provide insights that are currently not available at an aggregate level or in a timely way through national data sets. Additionally, Research England will be asking institutions to report on material changes they are making to research and innovation capabilities and capacity or in relation to wider changes in institutional form or organisation when these may affect the basis on which our funding is awarded.

We continue to see our role as facilitator, enabler and partner and believe we have a strong reputation for having timely and robust insights into the conditions underpinning our great research and innovation system. These two programmes of work are being taken forward in support of universities and, against the current backdrop, will strengthen Research England’s fundamental role in the research and innovation system. We look forward to working in close partnership with universities as we take these critical work programmes forward.

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March 24, 2025
Trump cuts research funding to six Aus universities and counting – Campus Review

At least six Group of Eight (Go8) universities have had research grants terminated by the United States amid an anti-diversity and gender ideology studies crackdown from US President Donald Trump’s office.

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March 24, 2025
What’s driving low levels of full economic cost recovery in research?
Media attention has emphasised that the financial issues facing universities continue to worsen. While research is a cornerstone and strength of the sector, it is often regarded as a cost, which leads to scrutiny as part of institutional savings targets. Despite calls to acknowledge the value of research, the focus understandably remains on research costs.

The focus of universities on the volume and cost of unfunded research, or more accurately, internally funded research, is a question that must be addressed. Institutions are reflecting on and revising internal research allowances as part of their efforts to achieve a more sustainable financial position, as the cross-subsidy from international student fees is no longer as viable as it once was.

The question of funded research, however, is a different matter. For quite some time, there have been questions about what constitutes the full economic cost (FEC) and how these costs are recovered when projects are funded. Both issues have once again come to the forefront in the current climate, especially as institutions are failing to recover the eligible costs of funded projects.

As part of the Innovation & Research Caucus, an investment funded by UKRI, we have been investigating why the recovery of UKRI-funded research is often below the stated rates. To put it simply, if the official recovery rate is 80 per cent FEC, why is 80 per cent not being recovered on UKRI-funded projects?

Understanding under-recovery

We conducted a series of interviews with chief financial officers, pro vice chancellors for research, and directors of research services across mission groups, the Transparent Approach to Costing (TRAC) group, and various geographic regions. They identified several key reasons why universities are not recovering the funding to which they are entitled.

Before exploring the causes of under-recovery on UKRI-funded projects, the project aimed to establish the extent to which TRAC data was curated and utilised. Notably, the study found that the data collected for TRAC does not exist within research organisations and would not otherwise be collected in this form if it were not for the TRAC reporting requirement.

While scrutinising TRAC data was less of a priority when the financial situation was more stable, in many institutions, it is now of interest to the top table and serves as the basis for modelling, projections, and scenario planning. That said, such analysis did not always recognise TRAC’s limitations in terms of how it was compiled and, therefore, its comparability.

In many of the research organisations consulted, the responsibilities for TRAC, project costing, and project delivery are distinct. Given the growing significance of TRAC data in influencing resource allocation and strategic decision-making, it is essential for research organisations to adopt a more integrated approach to compiling and utilising TRAC data to achieve improved outcomes.

Drivers of under-recovery

A wide range of factors explains why the cost recovered at the end of a funding grant is less than anticipated at the point of submission and award. Almost all respondents highlighted three factors as significant in low cost recovery:
1. Equipment and facilities costs were consistently cited as a factor, including issues associated with allocating and costing overheads and estates. Several institutions highlighted the difficulty in realistically costing equipment and facilities shared between research projects or between research projects and teaching.
1. Staff under-costing was frequently mentioned, as principal investigators (PIs) underestimated their own and their colleagues’ time commitment to projects. This ineffective practice was driven by a (mis)perception that lower costs will likely improve success rates – despite the emphasis being on value rather than cost within a specific funding envelope.
2. Inflation has been identified as a factor affecting all cost elements – from staff costs related to pay settlements and promotions to the rising expenses associated with consumables, equipment, and energy. This reveals a growing gap in applications, delivery, and reporting.
Beyond these top three, the report highlights the implications of the often “hidden” costs associated with supporting and administering UKRI grants, the perennial issues of match funding, and the often inevitable delays in starting and delivering projects – all of which add to the cost and increase the prospect of under-recovery.

In addition, an array of other contributing factors were also raised. These included the impact of exchange rates, eligibility criteria, the capital intensity of projects, cost recovery for partners, recruitment challenges, lack of contingency, and no cost extensions. While not pinpointing the importance of a single factor, the interplay and cumulative effect were considered to result in under-recovery.

Addressing under-recovery

Universities bear the cost of under-recovery, but funders and universities can take several actions to improve under-recovery – some of which are low- or no-cost, could be implemented in the short term, and would make a real difference.

Funders, such as UKRI, should provide clearer guidance for research organisations on how to cost facilities and equipment, as well as how to include these costs in research bids. Similarly, applicants and reviewers should receive clearer guidance regarding realistic expectations from PIs in leading projects, emphasising that value should be prioritised over cost. Another area that warrants clearer guidance is match funding, specifically for institutions regarding expectations and for reviewers on how match funding should be assessed. We are pleased to see that UKRI is already taking steps to address these points in its funding policies [editor’s note: this link will be live around 9am on Friday morning].

In the medium term, research funders could also review their approaches to indexation, which could help mitigate the impact of inflation in driving under-recovery, although this is, of course, not without cost. Another area worth exploring by both research organisations and funders is the provision of shared infrastructures and assets, both within and across institutions – again, a longer-term project.

We are already seeing institutions taking steps to manage and mitigate under-recovery, and there is scope to extend good practice. Perhaps the main challenge to improving cost recovery is better managing the link between project budgets – based on proposal costs – and project delivery costs. Ensuring a joined-up approach from project costing to reporting is important, but more important is developing a deeper understanding across these areas.

A final point is the need to ensure that academics vying for funding really understand the new realities of cost and recovery. This has not always been the case, and arguably still is not the case. These skills – from clarifying the importance of realistic staff costs to accurately costing the use of facilities to effectively managing project budgets – will help close the cost recovery gap.

The real FEC of research funding

The current project has focused on under-recovery in project delivery. The next step is to understand the real cost to research organisations of UKRI grant funding.

This means understanding the cost of developing, preparing and submitting a UKRI grant application – whether successful or not. It means understanding the costs associated with administering and reporting on a UKRI grant during and beyond the life of a project (think ResearchFish!).

For more information, please get in touch – or watch this space for further findings.

The Innovation & Research Caucus report, Understanding low levels of FEC cost recovery on UKRI grants, will be published on the UKRI site later today.
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March 21, 2025