“Significant attention has not yet been given” to AI impact, warns Committee on Research Integrity

Better standards and policies on the use of generative artificial intelligence in research are required to show it is trustworthy and protect the UK’s research system, according to the UK Committee on Research Integrity. 

In its second annual statement, the committee—which is overseen by the national funding agency UK Research and Innovation—says that while funders, publishers, research organisations and discipline-specific bodies are responding to the opportunities and challenges generative AI poses, “significant attention has not yet been given to the impact of this technology on research integrity”.

Existing policies and practices in the research sector around generative AI are not always consistent or easy to navigate and have gaps, it argues, suggesting that the research sector would benefit from the kind of investment available to develop AI safeguards in other parts of the economy.

Ethical considerations

“Researchers need the awareness and skills to understand and be accountable for the potential ‘black box’ that they are introducing into their research through the use of generative AI,” the report says.

It adds that ethical use of AI tools might also involve environmental considerations, given the large amounts of energy use that it involves.

The committee was set up in 2022 by UKRI on the recommendation of an inquiry into research integrity held by the Commons Science and Technology Committee in 2018. The idea was that it would champion research integrity in the UK, working closely with organisations such as the UK Research Integrity Office and the Concordat to Support Research Integrity Signatories Group to share good practice.

Its annual statement highlights the dangers of bias in AI and states that use of AI in developing research ideas, writing research funding proposals and in peer review of research papers is problematic if it is not carried out transparently.

While questions have been raised for some time about whether a regulator is needed for AI in the UK, the committee says this remains “an evolving issue” and that it has been watching closely developments in the US and EU.

Recent AI policies and reports

In the US, the National Academy of Medicine recently published a draft code of conduct on the use of AI in health, healthcare and biomedical science, while the European Commission has issued Guidelines on the Responsible Use of Generative AI in Research.

A Royal Society report in May 2024 called for a “balanced approach” to AI, taking account of the opportunities and risks it offers.

Meanwhile, publishers have been developing tools and guidelines on promoting ethical use of AI in research publishing.

Annual statements

As well as paying greater attention to AI, the UK Committee on Research Integrity wants all research-performing organisations, including higher education institutions, to publish annual statements on research integrity, including information about allegations of research misconduct and a summary of the outcomes of investigations.

It recommends greater consideration to the impact of social media on misconduct investigations, warning that it could compromise anonymity and, in some cases, the integrity of the investigation process.

In addition, it wants changes to promotion practices to reward those that make positive contributions to research culture.

It will publish a full report making recommendations on AI and other issues in 2025.

James Parry, chief innovation officer of the UK Research Integrity Office, said: “AI opens up new opportunities for research, but also raises questions on its safe, rigorous and ethical use. UKRIO will build upon its existing work on AI and research integrity in 2024/25 as one of its key workstreams, helping the research community address the complex challenges that it is facing.”

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Space South Central expects university’s membership to help boost space science

University College London has joined the UK’s “largest” regional space cluster as part of an initiative to deepen investments in space skills and knowledge. The move is expected to benefit both the university and the region.

The London university’s membership of Space South Central as an academic partner is expected to benefit researchers and help boost south-central England’s “world-class reputation for space expertise, research and innovation”.

‘Greater opportunities for collaboration’

Andrew Fazakerley, professor of space plasma physics and head of the UCL’s Department of Space and Climate Physics, said joining the cluster “will bring significant and tangible benefits to our growing community of researchers involved in space research”.

“It will mean greater opportunities for collaboration with both academic peers and industry partners, helping us to ensure that innovative ideas and research breakthroughs achieve their full potential,” he added.

The cluster unites business and academia to boost innovation, collaboration and growth across Hampshire, Surrey, and the Isle of Wight, the region with a £3 billion space industry comprising more than 170 space-related organisations and employing approximately 14,000 people.

Boost to space capabilities

UCL joins existing academic partners the University of Portsmouth, University of Southampton and University of Surrey.

The university is home to the Mullard Space Science Laboratory in Surrey (pictured) and the UK’s largest university space research group. It has participated in more than 35 satellite missions and over 200 rocket experiments.

The cluster expects that having UCL as a member will help it “strengthen ties between London’s business and academic networks and key space industry sector partners in the south of England” as well as to boost its space capabilities overseas given UCL’s international profile.

Louise Butt, director of the Space South Central Enterprise Network, said: “We are delighted that UCL has chosen to partner with Space South Central to support, enhance and benefit from our cluster initiatives.

“UCL brings a wealth of complementary expertise to our cluster, with a rich space heritage and a vast portfolio spanning planetary science, space policy, climate physics, astrochemistry, quantum science and much more.

“To have four world-class academic partners working together with our unrivalled range of up-stream and down-stream businesses–large and small–presents many exciting opportunities for the sector in Hampshire, Surrey and the Isle of Wight, and for the wider UK space industry.”

‘Delight’ over announcement

Geraint Rees, UCL vice-provost for research, innovation and global engagement, said: “I’m delighted that UCL is joining the largest regional space cluster in the UK. Collaboration with both industry and academic peers has been a defining feature of UCL’s space activity for over 60 years, stretching back to the multinational Ariel 1 satellite, Britain’s first step into space.

“It’s fitting to see this legacy of successful industry academic partnership continue with Space South Central and I look forward to seeing the synergies that arise.”

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Peter Kyle also says he will consider issue of visa costs for scientists, without committing to action

The UK’s science secretary, Peter Kyle, has said he prioritised a cybersecurity bill as a matter of “national security priority”, and will next work on an artificial intelligence bill.

“When I became secretary of state, within a very short period of time, and I’m talking hours not multiple days, I became very, very aware that there was a cybersecurity challenge that our country faced that I simply wasn’t aware of before becoming secretary of state,” Kyle told the Guardian today.

The new cybersecurity and resilience bill featured in the recent King’s speech, setting out the government’s legislative plans, bumping the much-anticipated AI bill.

Kyle added: “We are preparing the [AI] bill, we are consulting on the bill, and we will have the bill ready to go. We are committed to legislating for AI.”

‘Desperately exposed’

He told the paper the country is “desperately exposed” to cyber threats and that national resilience to both cyber and pandemic threats suffered “catastrophically” under the previous government.

His comment came as the National Cyber Security Centre warned last week about the rising “scale, pace and complexity” of threats to critical national infrastructure, with the nation’s capacity to repel them being outpaced by malicious actors.

Meanwhile, another recent report, from the Covid inquiry, said the UK’s pandemic planning was beset with “fatal strategic flaws” and has not improved much after the pandemic.

“We are not in the place we need to be, to be as resilient as we should be—the Covid inquiry has laid that bare,” Kyle said. “We are picking up the pieces of that, and it’s a job we take very seriously.”

Kyle also touched on the issue of visa costs for scientists, which some in the sector—including new science minister Patrick Vallance—have argued are too high and risk deterring research talent from coming to the UK.

“I am aware of this specific challenge, but as the secretary of state I see all of the challenges, and all of the potential, in the round,” Kyle said. “I have to see where that fits in alongside all of the other challenges and opportunities, and where I see a need for adjustment I’ll start making representation to the relevant departments.”

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Free speech legislation paused, and David Behan to head the Office for Students

It took two years to pass, a year to appoint a director and six months to consult, but the Freedom of Speech (Higher Education) Act has been put on hold by the new Labour government, just days before its powers were due to come into effect. The news came in a parliamentary statement, which also saw career civil servant David Behan appointed as interim head of the Office for Students.

Behan—the former chair of Health Education England—was the author of a statutory review of the regulator for higher education in England, which was also published on Friday. The stinging report is the second critical assessment the OfS has received this academic year, following an inquiry in November by the Lords Industry and Regulators Committee.

Behan is the sort of calming interim appointment you make after an institution has been through a public trauma. Over the summer, people at the OfS (now on its third chair since its inception in 2019) will have some time to think about what has been going on at what we once dubbed the Venus de Milo of arm’s-length regulators.

In her written statement, education secretary Bridget Phillipson confirmed that the process to appoint a permanent chair has started and will conclude next year. The Behan appointment implicitly recognises the problems at what Phillipson previously has called “a politicised regulator”, and that there are few with sufficient recent knowledge of the state of play within the OfS black box to start unwinding the damage.

Some interim appointments come with the brief not to touch anything until the next guy or girl comes along; others are there to clean out the stables before a permanent successor enters the fray. We suspect that Behan’s time at the OfS may be more in the latter mode.

Phillipson’s Friday release also confirmed her decision “to stop further commencement of the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023 in order to consider options, including its repeal. I am aware of concerns that the act would be burdensome on providers and on the OfS, and I will confirm my long-term plans as soon as possible.”

Rather than prolong the OfS’s time in the trenches of the culture wars, the regulator will now “more sharply focus on key priorities, which include monitoring financial sustainability, ensuring quality, protecting public money and regulating in the interests of students”. However, the OfS will continue to introduce “strengthened protections for students facing harassment and sexual misconduct, including relating to the use of non-disclosure agreements in such cases by universities and colleges”.

Despite the parliamentary language, Phillipson’s statement is a clear repudiation of the legislative legacy of the previous government in higher education. The regulator is being reigned in and being tasked with sorting out the financial mess in universities—a need that ought to have been obvious since at least the Lords select committee report.

The former Conservative minister who finally dragged the bill over the line, Claire Countinho, popped up in the Sunday Telegraph to defend the legislation. The other ex-ministers associated with the passage of the act all lost their seats at the general election.

That has not stopped Tory outriders complaining about the loss of the act, which was set to take effect on 1 August in the absence of guidelines from the OfS on how it would actually work. Several voices have said that the views of gender-critical feminists would no longer be protected on campuses.

This is a red herring. The legislation contains nothing that would have altered the cases of Kathleen Stock at the University of Sussex, for example, and Jo Phoenix at the Open University, any more than it would have affected the case of David Millar, who won an industrial tribunal against the University of Bristol for wrongful dismissal over his “anti-Zionist” views.

In the case of Stock, the OfS has been conducting a three-year investigation into her resignation from Sussex and has yet to publish any findings. The primary power of the act was a legal tort that gave external speakers the course to appeal, and compensation in the event of the cancellation of a speaking engagement.

However, Phil Rosenberg, president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, said the act, “while well-intentioned, risked enabling antisemitic extremists to access university campuses by severely impacting the ability of universities to block their presence”. He told the Times that scrapping it “will enable the government to consider how to ensure that freedom of speech is protected without allowing free rein to purveyors of hate speech”.

Speaking to those close to the legislation, Playbook understands that the tort was intended as a deterrent, which would nudge universities and student unions into compliance but would never be tested in a court of law. But institutions have spent significant time, money and psychic energy preparing for a confused and unenforceable act that arose from the views of splenetic opinion columns rather than a secure evidence base which identified a genuine problem in universities.

So, good riddance to bad legislation. Hopefully universities can also be free of the grifters who have made careers out of the vexatious caricatures of students and their institutions of learning, although somehow we doubt it.

Fit for the future

Speaking of grown-ups being back in charge of public bodies, David Behan’s independent report of the OfS, Fit for the Future: Higher Education Regulation Towards 2035, is a riveting read. Swap out the latest Linwood Barclay in your holiday suitcase for this regulatory roller coaster.

The TL;DR version is that political mission creep at the OfS has seen the regulator lose focus on what it is supposed to be for. Imagine if Ofwat, the body that regulates the marketised water industry, were given powers to fine wild swimmers for being woke or protesting over effluent in rivers—that is where the Office for Students has ended up with the learners whose interests it was established to protect.

However, it is not, says Sir David, all the fault of the folk at the OfS, who are there to ensure compliance with legislation even if they have been guilty of regulatory overreach. “The OfS does not regulate in a vacuum, and government needs to clearly articulate its strategy for the future of higher education, considering both the private and public good of higher education, for individuals, the economy and society,” says Behan.

The report recommends that the OfS pairs back its priorities to concentrate on “monitoring financial sustainability, ensuring quality, protecting public money and regulating in the interests of students”. This view is very much reflected in Phillipson’s parliamentary statement.

Behan is interested in students, which has been something of a rarity at the higher education regulator since it was established. He wants to see the OfS return to its roots, with a focus on its “consumer enforcement powers”. He suggests the regulator and the sector work together to come up with a model that works for student interests.

Not only that––he wants (shock, horror) the Office for Students to pay attention to said students. Behan calls on the regulator to seek “opportunities to involve students directly in its formal governance and regulatory activity, by constituting the student panel as a formal committee to the board and including students in quality assessments and investigations”.

But he does not stop at university health and paying attention to students. There are recommendations on reducing regulatory burden on institutions, working with other bodies within the higher education landscape, and on running pilot schemes before rolling out regulatory changes.

On quality, Behan recommends doing away with the need for a separate designated body and encourages the OfS to take on this role itself as part of “providing a continuous improvement feedback loop” for providers rather than beating them with a stick.

On finances, Behan suggests that the government needs to take a view on “whether the non-interventionist positioning is still the most appropriate for meeting the challenges of today”. Those challenges might become considerable on the other side of summer, when university recruitment targets are met or missed.

Rather than living in denial about university finances, Behan recommends that the OfS shares intelligence with universities and other sector bodies to “support sector planners to undertake realistic and prudent forecasting, scenario-planning and decision-making”. In other words, stop concocting university budgets on the basis of heroically optimistic recruitment forecasts.

There are also recommendations on joined-up working between the OfS and government, which sound as if they come from Behan’s own experiences of working in the NHS. However, significantly, the report says the OfS should develop “a more transparent style of communications to demonstrate to the sector its independence from government”.

There is a lot to unpack in that sentence, and a lot of work to do to reverse the damage of the past few years. Behan recommends an independent evaluation of the OfS board and a clear determination of which roles should be in the gift of the secretary of state, and which roles should be appointed by the chair.

“This will provide clear lines of accountability and avoid a dilution of the chief executive’s authority. The review recognises new legislation would be required to enact this,” reads the report. An experienced regulator like Behan is pointing out that something has gone wrong in the design of the Office for Students and is in need of urgent remedy.

The report is something of a vindication for vice-chancellors who have criticised regulatory burden and overreach. Behan is recommending a reset of the OfS and in turn wants to see “the sector reciprocate with the OfS, engaging productively and willingly with regulation”. Well, you can’t have everything, but it is certainly possible to have a much healthier relationship between universities, the regulator and government than we have had since 2019.

And finally…

In other news this weekend, the Sunday Times reports that “top universities” are to take students with lower grades in clearing in an attempt to solve their cash crisis. It is really a story about Ucas publishing the grades that universities actually accept for degree courses rather than the prospectus sticker price.

The most interesting part of the story is a quote from Higher Education Policy Institute director Nick Hillman, who says: “The [financial] crunch point for universities this year could be clearing. I expect to see more Russell Group universities in clearing because of the fall in overseas students. That will mean that lower-ranking universities have even more competition for UK students and may not meet their targets.

“If universities have a bad clearing and then a lot of their students drop out in the first few weeks of term, before they pay the first instalment of their tuition fees, that could be catastrophic. A trigger for a bankruptcy could be a bad clearing or a bank calling in a debt because it has lost faith in an institution, or for some other reason.”

Meanwhile, the Sunday Times also reports a recommendation from Grant Ritchie, the former principal of Dundee and Angus College, who served on the board of the Scottish Funding Council, that Scotland’s further and higher education institutions need to consider mergers. He is quoted as saying the Scottish sector is “in a state of financial crisis and there are really tough decisions that need to be made by individual institutions and by institutions collectively”.

He says: “It also needs the government to be serious about taking a leadership role and having ideas about how to move forward because the current structures are unaffordable. Mergers and intensive collaboration are required to make sense of the large number of institutions that we have in Scotland.”

We suspect this might be a long hot summer for higher education across the UK. Tomorrow sees the last regular edition of Playbook for this academic year—with the season finale of Ivory Tower on Wednesday—but you will be able to keep up with all the big stories on universities and research with our daily news service throughout August.

On Research Professional News today

In yesterday’s Sunday Reading, Gordon McKenzie draws on 18 years’ experience of higher education finance to predict future policy.

Chris Parr reports that the Labour government is to consider repealing last year’s legislation on freedom of speech in higher education over concerns that it is burdensome for universities, student unions and the Office for Students, and that the Office for Students’ regulatory approach provides insufficient protection for students in the event of a university exiting the market, according to a new report.

He also writes that education secretary Bridget Phillipson has confirmed that David Behan, former head of the Care Quality Commission, will be appointed interim chair of the Office for Students, the English higher education regulator, and that a government-commissioned review of the Office for Students has recommended that England’s regulator act in a “bold and confident manner” and monitor the financial sustainability of all higher education providers more closely.

Additionally, he gives us a rundown of the 32 recommendations made in the government-commissioned review of the Office for Students.

Emily Twinch tells us that the UK government has appointed a tech entrepreneur to create an action plan that will support the country’s efforts to develop an artificial intelligence sector that can compete on the world stage.

John Whitfield says the UK government has announced it will invest £106 million to create five hubs for R&D in quantum technology.

Nina Bo Wagner reveals that the German government has proposed a broad post-Brexit alternative deal between the UK and EU that would include student mobility arrangements and ameliorate high visa costs, according to reports, and that Switzerland’s main research funder has decided to raise minimum PhD salaries by 6 per cent from 2026 onwards.

John Bonner writes that five new members have been appointed to the board of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology, EIT.

In the news

The BBC reports that Durham University’s choir has been invited to sing at St Peter’s Basilica in September. It writes that the University of Northampton is celebrating the 50th anniversary of its Gay Outdoor Club.

It also reports that a court has given the University of Sheffield permission to clear the Gaza protest camp outside its students’ union building, and that controversial new powers for universities and student unions to be fined for failing to uphold freedom of speech have been put on hold by the government.

The BBC also reports that Anglia Ruskin University will get a new media and TV building, despite objections.

The Guardian writes that Jonny Clothier, who was refused graduation at Bristol University for 41 years over an unpaid bill relating to his flatmate’s bird, has now graduated. The paper also reports on Labour halting the Tory’s law on freedom of speech in English universities.

The Times says Scottish universities must merge to survive, according to experts. It reports on a King’s College London donor linked to the Communist Party of China and writes that ministers are wrong to shelve legislation passed by parliament to protect free speech in universities.

The paper also suggests that Britain has too many universities and that the cash crisis resulting in a fall in the number of overseas applicants is forcing top universities to take students with lower grades. It also reports that education secretary Bridget Phillipson is to announce reforms, among which is telling the OfS it must save universities from bankruptcy without the help of the taxpayer.

The Telegraph reveals that every member of Team GB men’s rowers at the Paris Olympics are Oxford Brookes alumni. It publishes a comment accusing Labour of surrendering to the enemies free speech and publishes another comment condemning Bridget Phillipson’s decision to cancel the commencement of the Higher Education Act, saying it brings shame upon the party.

The Financial Times reports that the space industry is calling for bolder bets in the UK’s funding strategy.

The Independent writes that Labour’s decision to pause the freedom of speech law has been branded as ‘chilling’ by a former Conservative minister.

The Herald reports that research by University of Dundee professor Husam AlWaer, looking at how people in refugee camps reshape their environment, has been given a prestigious award.

The Scotsman writes that colleges have stressed they will not be ‘press-ganged’ into mergers as part of a restructure of the University of the Highlands and Islands.

The week ahead

Parliament goes into recess on Tuesday 30 July, which is also the date of the last Playbook of this academic year. 

From 11am on Tuesday, there will be a debate in the House of Lords on regulating AI technologies. 

Wednesday is the final day of the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales’s existence. On Thursday, we formally welcome Medr as the tertiary body for Welsh education and research.

Also on Thursday, the Higher Education Policy Institute publishes a paper on retention, progression and promotion of early career Black academics.

The Playbook would not be possible without Donatella Montrone, Harriet Swain, Chris Parr, Orlen Crawford and Fiona McIntyre.

Thanks for reading. Have a great day.

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Gordon McKenzie draws on 18 years’ experience of higher education finance to predict future policy

Higher education funding is simple—that’s what I was told when I started working on higher education policy as a civil servant in 2006. It’s a compound, they said, of number of students, unit of resource for teaching, and terms and conditions of student finance. So simple, and so contentious in the 18 years since.

As I retire from working in the sector, higher education funding is still being debated, and the stakes seem higher than ever.

“Right system, wrong parameters.” This (from Nicholas Barr, quoting Anna Vignoles) is a good description of the state of income-contingent loans now. Right system because there is no financial barrier to access and, as Karl Marx pointed out, “free” higher education is just a middle-class subsidy from taxes. Wrong parameters because the various changes since 2012 mean that in England we are loaning too much, for too long, in a regressive system with far too little direct government subsidy.

Higher education provides public, as well as private, benefits and the balance of funding should reflect that. But with public subsidy at just 16 per cent, students and graduates are, pretty much, paying for higher education themselves. Yet ministers have moaned about the choices students and graduates make and what the system delivers.

In The Blunders of our Governments, Anthony King and Ivor Crewe show how the Treasury’s zeal for savings destroyed the potential social policy benefits of the child support reforms of the early 1990s. At the time, the Labour spokesman Michael Meacher quipped that the 1994 white paper, Children Come First, should have been called, The Treasury Comes First. While it has taken longer, given where we have ended up, you could make the same joke about the 2011 white paper, Students at the Heart of the System.

The combination of accounting trickery that flattered the national accounts and (full-time) students’ willingness to take out the loans proved addictive. Fees of £6,000 and a smaller reduction in teaching grant? No, push it to £9,000. Keep some level of maintenance grants? No. Like Lou Reed, the Treasury was rushing on its run. Reinstate maintenance as well as extend the repayment period as the Augar panel recommended? No. And after all those changes to loan terms and conditions, the right system for funding mass higher education is now described as not working by the new government. I guess the Treasury just didn’t know.

Public priorities

In between dropping out of one university course and starting another, I worked in a West Midlands factory making plastic bags. The chargehand, Keith, asked what I was studying and I made the mistake of telling him. After a long, incredulous pause he replied: “****ing drama? You ****ing ****er!”

Apart from any personal animosity, I think Keith was making a broader point about the extent to which certain subjects, qualifications or students should be prioritised for publicly supported higher education. At different times, I have met politicians from all three main parties who held broadly similar views to Keith (although not necessarily expressed in the same language)––some scepticism about the number of students and what they study.

In the 11 years since George Osborne said he was ending the cap on aspiration, government policy has enabled anyone suitably qualified to enter higher education if accepted and to study what they choose. The “number of students” factor in the funding calculation has been set aside.

Government rhetoric, particularly in recent years, has been rather different. By the time the 2017 Higher Education and Research Act put in place the legislative underpinning for a regulated market (legislation blocked during the coalition years to save Liberal Democrat blushes), the Conservatives had fallen out of love with expansion. But while ministers trash-talked degrees, they did not restrict student numbers––perhaps because, despite their magical policy thinking, even they could see that 30,000 degree apprenticeship starts was no alternative to a higher education system enrolling half a million new first-degree students.

Getting it right

Yet calls for a re-introduction of student number controls continue to come from both the political left and right. Many taxpayer-supported goods and services are rationed explicitly (e.g. means testing) or as a result of underfunding, so there is nothing wicked in asking whether higher education has got it right––although I would have more sympathy if the system had a much higher level of public subsidy than it does.

Arguments for number controls tend to be around teaching quality (if there is only so much to go around then having fewer students would allow government to spend more per head); questions about whether students are “suitably qualified” (the view that providers have a financial incentive to recruit those who are not); or a mismatch with the labour market (reported under-utilisation of skills, falling graduate premium, absence of promised productivity increases).

And I suspect the arguments won’t go away, despite the Labour manifesto promising to “continue to support the aspirations of every person who meets the requirements and wants to go to university”. Labour wants a skills strategy, supporting an industrial strategy, supporting growth. If new ministers think the system is failing to produce what the country needs at the right price, then they may return to the question, “How many students, studying what?”

Figure 1 in the recent Office for Students publication on the financial sustainability of English providers shows the real-terms value of the unit of resource for teaching over time. And it is now pretty much where it was in 1997 when Labour came to power, accepted the need for top-up fees and subsequently introduced them––first at £1,000 and then £3,000. 

Fee levels

Some commentators have suggested that a Labour government may well raise fees to just under £10,000 early in the Parliament. This is because a) Labour has talked––although not in the manifesto––about a fairer deal for students and graduates, and if that means increased maintenance and/or decreased repayments then it would be the least-worst time politically to increase fees as well; b) Labour will have to do something about university finances as “universities going under” is on Sue Gray’s list of potential crises facing the new government and c) while Bridget Phillipson has said there are “no plans” for fee rises, she has not ruled them out. 

I get the political timing point but I’m not convinced the Labour Treasury team will think the risk that some universities may fail is best addressed by giving all universities a 5-6 per cent fee increase. They may instead agree with the OfS that the “sector as a whole has been in a relatively strong financial position for much of the past decade” and that the “financial challenges it is facing now could be a catalyst to drive positive change and innovation”. And they may see Scotland and Northern Ireland––where very much lower levels of the unit of funding for teaching have not yet caused a university to fail––as canaries in the mine and think maybe this can wait a bit longer.

If so, I hope they also take account of the OfS’s warning that leaving sorting out sector financial crises to the individual actions of institutions risks impacts on the size, shape and reputation of UK higher education––impacts that could damage student choice, the breadth and depth of academic provision, and the ability of diverse institutions to maximise their contribution to local and national economies.

Gordon McKenzie is the former CEO of GuildHE and a former senior civil servant

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A rundown of the 32 recommendations made in government-commissioned review of English regulator

In December 2023, former head of the Care Quality Commission, David Behan, was commissioned to lead a review of the Office for Students by the former Conservative government.

His conclusions were published in a final report on 26 July 2024. On the same date, Behan was appointed interim chair of the OfS, England’s higher education regulator. 

The new Labour government has said it accepts the “core recommendations” of Behan’s report, which call for a stronger focus on the financial security of governance, a more collaborative approach to regulatory work, and consideration of the burden that regulation places on sector bodies.

It makes 32 separate recommendations:

Efficacy

1. That the OfS reduces its number of strategic objectives and focuses on the priorities of monitoring financial sustainability, ensuring quality, protecting public money and regulating in the interests of students.

2. That government and the OfS further consider the legislative powers and tools required to enable the OfS to effectively regulate against these priorities.

Regulating in the student interest

3. That to support the OfS to enact a strong, student championing role, the OfS should be given consumer enforcement powers.

4. That the OfS and sector explore the development of a model students’ contract for higher education.

5. That the OfS seeks opportunities to involve students directly in its formal governance and regulatory activity, by constituting the student panel as a formal committee to the board, and including students in quality assessments and investigations.

6. That the OfS considers an enhanced focus on the assurance of the management and governance of providers, and how they carry out the range of priority areas for their students and providers, by revising and strengthening the ‘good governance’ ongoing conditions of registration.

How the OfS regulates: risk-based regulation

7. That the OfS board reviews its risk appetite framework and approach with a view to becoming more proactive in anticipating, identifying and responding rapidly to address emerging risk.

8. That the DfE and OfS engage the sector in an ongoing, constructive dialogue with a view to reducing unnecessary regulatory burden, including data burden, and to seek to embed the Regulators’ Code principle of ‘collect once, use many times’.

9. That the OfS works more collaboratively with other regulators and arm’s-length bodies within the wider higher education system to understand their collective requirements and identify opportunities to reduce areas of regulatory overlap and duplication.

10.That the OfS considers the benefits of an independent academic evaluation of its practice and approach, alongside stakeholder feedback, in seeking to improve itself. This should include an evaluation of the effectiveness of its regulatory intervention.

11.That the OfS consults the sector when implementing changes to regulatory methods and then pilots such approaches before formal rollout.

How the OfS regulates: quality

12.That the OfS’s quality assessment methodologies and activity be brought together to form a more integrated assessment of quality.

13.That the OfS contributes to the overall improvement of the higher education system, providing a continuous improvement feedback loop and description of high-quality higher education. 

14.That the OfS be prescribed as an official whistleblowing body to ensure whistleblowers can be afforded full protections when providing information. This intelligence should inform the qualitative assessment of risk to quality.

15.That the OfS describes high-quality education and the standards required to demonstrate high quality, without the need for a separate designated body to perform this function. Legislation should therefore be amended to clarify that the OfS will perform this role.

How the OfS regulates: financial sustainability

16.That government undertakes policy work to revisit and clarify its position on market exit and whether the non-interventionist positioning is still the most appropriate for meeting the challenges of today.

17.That the OfS and government continue to build an infrastructure to offer advice, guidance and support for providers experiencing financial sustainability challenges, considering options such as early warning identification, management of emerging risk and prevention of disorderly market exit.

18.That the OfS continues to work with the sector to build and share an accurate and current picture of financial risk in the system, developed through open and honest dialogue and the sharing of intelligence with the sector, government, UKRI and relevant partners. 

19.That the OfS revises the requirements for student protection plans to ensure these are current, detailed and accurately consider risks to, and mitigations for, these risks to students.

Relationships with the sector

20.That the OfS develops a comprehensive stakeholder strategy, including an annual stakeholder survey, to continue building on its relationship with the sector.

21.That the sector reciprocates with the OfS, engaging productively and willingly with regulation.

Accountability

22.That the sponsorship team act as the central conduit between the OfS and government, managing the initial policy asks of the OfS. Outside of agreed business planning, all new and ad-hoc requests for work should be managed by the sponsorship team, until such time as that work has been agreed as part of, or as an adjunct to, the business plan.

23.That stronger information-sharing protocols are put into place between the OfS and government to enable joined-up working and proactive feedback around key areas of shared priority and risk.

24.That there is regular contact between DSIT and DfE to enable a joined-up approach to sponsorship and to allow for more open dialogue regarding financial sustainability as part of a wider cross-government approach to sharing knowledge and learning about regulation.

Independence of the OfS

25.That the OfS develops a more transparent style of communication to demonstrate to the sector its independence from government.

Governance

26.That the OfS commissions an independent board evaluation.

27.That DfE carefully considers upcoming appointments to the board, taking the opportunity of vacancies to ensure it has the required skills, experience and expertise for the challenges the sector will face over the coming decade. 

28.That DfE reassesses which members of the OfS’s leadership team are appointed by the secretary of state. In keeping with other arm’s-length bodies, the secretary of state should appoint the chair and non-executive directors. The board should then appoint the chief executive, and the chief executive should in turn appoint their executive team. The review recognises new legislation would be required to enact this.

29.That there should be a review of which specific executive roles formally constitute towards the make-up of the board’s membership.

Efficiency

30.That the OfS continues to pursue efficiency savings and enhanced productivity as it considers the efficacy, accountability and governance recommendations of this review.

31.The OfS should align its business planning with a continuous improvement cycle that considers efficiencies in line with effectiveness, and agree a resourcing plan with DfE.

32.That DfE conducts a review into the OfS’s fee structure within the context of the OfS’s current and planned work on efficiency and productivity.

Some recommendations have been edited for length. The report and recommendations in full are available on the DfE website.

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Government-commissioned report calls for bolder action from English regulator

A government-commissioned review of the Office for Students has recommended that England’s regulator act in a “bold and confident manner”, and monitor the financial sustainability of all higher education providers more closely.

In a review commissioned by the Department for Education last year and published on 26 July, David Behan—who has today been named interim chair of the OfS—said the regulator should concentrate on four key priorities in the short term: monitoring financial sustainability, ensuring quality, protecting public money, and acting in the interests of students.

The government said in a statement that it accepts Behan’s “core recommendations, recognising that strong regulation is crucial to ensuring a stable future for the UK’s world-leading higher education sector”.

Behan said the OfS and the government should work together to manage financial sustainability, collaborate more effectively on data and intelligence that can proactively help to protect students, and recommended the OfS introduce an “integrated model of quality regulation” to set and assess quality standards.

His report calls for the regulator to become “a more active collaborator” with government departments, UK Research and Innovation, the Office of the Independent Adjudicator for Higher Education, and bigger education institutions. It adds that consideration should be given to whether “improvements can be made to reduce the overall data burden” of regulation.

Meanwhile, the review states that the OfS should develop a more “transparent style of communication to demonstrate to the sector its independence from government”.

It also states that the Higher Education and Research Act should be amended to remove “the need for a separate designated [quality] body”. The OfS became the designated quality body for England last year, after the Quality Assurance Agency relinquished the role, but it had not been confirmed whether it would retain the position.

“It has been a privilege to lead the review of the OfS and I now look forward to delivering the changes the review recommends, importantly financial sustainability, quality, student interest and value for money,” Behan said.

An overview of all 32 recommendations made by the review is available here.

Delivering better outcomes

Susan Lapworth, chief executive of the OfS, said it was an “important time for higher education” as Behan took up his role as chair, and welcomed “the thoughtful conclusions and recommendations” in his report.

“Students and colleagues from across the higher education sector found time to speak with him during the review and their important perspectives are reflected in his report and its proposals,” she said. “The review highlights a range of important areas—including the financial sustainability of the sector—that the OfS will continue to prioritise.”

Lapworth added that the report will prompt “reflection for government, the sector, and the OfS”, and sets out areas in which the OfS “can, and will, continue to improve”.

“We continue to work hard to improve our engagement with the institutions we regulate, to ensure that trust-based relationships can underpin effective regulation,” she said. “And we are developing our understanding of the things that matter to students, and how their perspectives can inform our work, as we develop our new strategy.”

Jamie Roberts, policy manager for the Russell Group of research-intensive universities, said financial sustainability was “the most significant and growing challenge for the higher education sector”.

“Moves towards a more genuinely risk-based approach to regulation would also be positive and could help cut unnecessary red tape,” Roberts said. “Streamlining the OfS’s approach to regulation with a renewed focus on key challenges would help stop resources being diverted away from teaching and student support.”

A spokesperson for Universities UK said the Behan review was “thorough and we welcome many of its recommendations”.

“Its findings underline the importance of an independent regulator for higher education in England and the need for a focus on the financial sustainability of the sector,” the spokesperson said. “This will continue to strengthen the sector’s relationship with the OfS and ultimately help deliver better outcomes for students.”

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Ivory Tower: Next on Sky Sports HE, 10 days of the universities and research Olympics

Day 1: Opening ceremony

And here comes Team GB, one of the favourites in this year’s events. No strangers to a league table, we hope to see UK universities competing with the US, Australia and Canada for international numbers. Unusually, this year the teams are not parading around a stadium but sailing in boats up the Seine.

It’s fortunate for Britain that the Conservatives recently lost the election because, of course, their policy was to stop all boats sailing from France. At the front of our vessel, you might be able to spot team captain Vivienne Stern, chief executive of Universities UK, who will be participating in the early morning TV and radio interviews event, a new category in this year’s games which combines wrestling, fencing and heavy-lifting.

Day 2: Marathon

As we approach the final stages on the streets of Paris, this has been a truly impressive effort from the Brits. After five years of strikes over a defined benefit pension scheme, British universities certainly know a thing or two about arduous marathons.

The frontrunners now approach the Rue des Écoles, famed home of the Sorbonne and other institutions of higher learning. But what’s this? It looks as if the route has been blocked by a flaming barricade with staff and students barring the way.

We haven’t seen anything like this in France since 2009. I can’t quite see what they are protesting about… Ah, yes, it looks like that old bug bear, the Bologna process, to bring universities into line with European and Anglo-Saxon standards.

One banner reads, “After Brexit, why are we still doing this?” But you’ve got to say that’s a misunderstanding. After Brexit, recession and the declining value of tuition fees, British universities are now in line with continental counterparts: they are just as impoverished as everyone else.

Day 3: Track and field

You join us for the final of the academic relay race. Hosts France, like so many others, are using the tried and trusted Erasmus+ method, while the Brits have their own alternative scheme—let’s hope they’ve been practising their exchanges.

The starting pistol fires; there’s an early lead for the European teams. Taith, the Welsh runner, makes the first exchange for Britain. It’s now with the Scottish parliament, which has promised a successful exchange, but we’ve yet to see any evidence of it.

That looks like a terrible fumble from Scotland, but it’s now with Turing from England, who exchanges with no one. Oh dear, someone has really dropped the baton there.

Day 4: Diving

It’s been an exciting day in the pool with success for Britain’s vice-chancellors in the 100-metre crawl, something they’ve practised extensively with ministers in the previous government. Now we take to the high boards for the diving contest.

British universities are hot favourites here, they’ve been taking a nosedive for several years now. And here’s late entrant Jacqui Smith, minister for further education, higher education and skills, whose own career took a sensational dive from home secretary to podcaster in record time.

Smith comes to the edge of the board and looks to take the plunge. She jumps, performs a classic DfE twist and turn, and the water covers over her head. Let’s hope she is not out of depth.

Day 5: Gymnastics

High hopes for Britain in the men’s event as science minister Patrick Vallance now approaches the horizontal bar. So far, UK science has been doing somersaults, taken a pummelling on the horse, and been vaulted over by the likes of Canada and New Zealand, but finally the bar on Horizon has been lifted.

Vallance begins his routine. The Brits might be a little rusty on the horizon programme after years of absence from the competition. There will be deductions for slips and errors using a complex repayment system to the Treasury that no one quite understands.

Vallance has got a strong grip, and that’s some impressive flips and twists from the UK government, man. He should now be looking to dismount but he seems unable to let go. That’s what comes of being a life peer in the science minister role. He could be here for some time, going round and round…

Day 6: Rowing

The Brits have really come to dominate rowing in higher education. Some say it’s because you can sit down while doing it, but some of our best rowers do it standing up.

In recent years we have some great rows in higher education. Who can forget science secretary Michelle Donelan’s row with members of an equality advisory board, or education secretary Gillian Keegan’s row over minimum staffing levels.

And, of course, the brief but glorious career of skills minister Andrea Jenkyns, who could start a row in an empty house. Our best hope this year is in the mixed pairs, where the University and College Union and the Universities and Colleges Employers Association will be rowing about the annual pay rise, even though everyone agrees higher education in the UK is bankrupt.

Day 7: Cycling

This is another set of events that British higher education excels at, going round and round the same track for ages until someone finally crashes. And, of course, UK universities have their own Trac programme they complete every year, even though no one can really remember why.

We’ve had some great successes over the years. Perhaps most memorably when universities minister Jo Johnson introduced the gold, silver and bronze awards for the Teaching Excellence Framework, which was widely recognised as a recycling of a bad idea that took everyone for a ride.

Later on, science minister Peter Kyle will be leading the UK in the team pursuit with a target of 3 per cent of GDP by 2030 to meet. Let’s hope no one in the Treasury puts a spoke in his wheels.

Day 8: Track and field 2

Welcome back to the Stade de France, where later we’ll see the blue-ribbon event of the 100-metre sprint. Competing for Britain is outgoing UKRI chief executive Ottoline Leyser, who tells us she can’t wait to make a dash for it.

In a great evening of athletics, we will also see some long-distance running. We spoke to many representatives of UK universities today who have said they would run a mile if the Tories ever got back in.

But first let’s go over to the hurdles, where the Office for Students has been laying out some pretty high barriers for universities to jump over. However, we understand James Wharton has pulled out of the race as he was obviously for the high jump.

Day 9: Shooting

So far, these games have been a great success for British universities, with education secretary Bridget Phillipson winning friends for her unexpected performance in the graduate visa route slalom. There’s also been success for the Brits in the modern pentathlon of REF, TEF, KEF, LEO and NSS.

Now we’re on the shooting range for an event the Brits are currently world champions at: the large-bore circular firing squad event. What an array of talent we have, from vice-chancellors and trade unions to government ministers and sector thought leaders.

This year the group will be led by the free speech tsar, Arif Ahmed—a controversial choice since he declared that no one should be shot down just for voicing an unpopular opinion. However, with the new government pressing pause on new free speech legislation set to take effect in a matter of days, it seems as if the guy charged with tackling cancel culture may already have been cancelled.

Day 10: Closing ceremony

Now, that’s a heart-warming sight after a such a competitive and challenging set of events. It really is something to see so many people from British universities still working in August.

Such a pity that Team GB became embroiled in that doping scandal when former education secretary Gavin Williamson took part in the A-Level Results Judo. The organisers said they had never seen such a big dope in the system and have banned the UK from all subsequent events.

Terms of use: this is a free email for fun on a Friday. It should be passed on like the Democratic Party’s nomination for president. Want to order a replica of Team GB’s higher education Olympics mascots, Russell the Fresher and Nando’s the Returner? Want to say hello? Email ivorytower@researchresearch.com

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Tech entrepreneur and Aria chair Matt Clifford appointed to deliver programme to grow AI sector

The UK government has appointed a tech entrepreneur to create an action plan that will support the country’s efforts to develop an artificial intelligence sector that can compete on the world stage.

Matt Clifford is charged with finding ways to use artificial intelligence (AI) in driving economic growth in the country and improving the lives of its citizens.

Clifford is co-founder of a startup, Entrepreneur First, that helps people to build technology companies. He said: “AI presents us with so many opportunities to grow the economy and improve people’s lives. The UK is leading the way in many areas, but we can do even better.

“I’m excited to start work and develop an ambitious roadmap to identify the biggest opportunities and support the new government as it makes important choices about where to focus its efforts.”

The tech entrepreneur is also chair of the Advanced Research and Invention Agency, a government research and funding agency.

Work underway

Clifford will be responsible for creating an action plan that boosts AI take-up of technology across all parts of the economy, in both the public and private sectors. He will be expected to examine the infrastructure, talent and data access that will be required to achieve that.

Work on the action plan has started and will involve key industry and civil society figures. Clifford has been asked to deliver a set of recommendations to the science secretary, Peter Kyle, in September.

The plan will assess what the UK needs in terms of computer infrastructure and other resources by 2030.  

Kyle said: “We’re putting AI at the heart of the government’s agenda to boost growth and improve our public services. Together we will use AI to drive productivity and economic growth in every part of the country, so we can make everyone better off.” 

AI unit

The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology will also establish an ‘AI Opportunities Unit’, with the aim of bringing together the knowledge and expertise to implement the action plan’s recommendations.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves explained that “artificial intelligence has the potential to raise productivity and help us do that”.

“Our AI Opportunities Unit will unlock its full potential to grow a more productive economy, create good jobs across the country, and deliver the excellent public services that people deserve while saving taxpayers’ money,” she said.

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Education secretary Bridget Phillipson ‘considering options’ including scrapping controversial legislation

The Labour government is to consider repealing last year’s legislation on freedom of speech in higher education, over concerns that it is burdensome for universities, students’ unions and the Office for Students.

Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, said in a written ministerial statement on 26 July that she had made the decision to “stop further commencement” of the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act to “consider options, including its repeal”.

“I am aware of concerns that the act would be burdensome on providers and on the OfS, and I will confirm my long-term plans as soon as possible,” Phillipson said.

The act passed in May last year, and offers people who feel they have been no-platformed by universities or student groups a legal avenue to seek financial compensation.

The legislation also established a “free speech tsar” at the OfS to oversee campus free speech issues. The inaugural holder of the post is University of Cambridge philosophy professor Arif Ahmed.

However, the proposals were unpopular with universities, with many experts—including university leaders and members of both the House of Commons and the House of Lords—claiming that the legislation was unnecessary. Other raised concerns that legal cases could prove so costly for universities that it might discourage them from inviting controversial speakers to campus in the first place.

Chaos avoided?

Diana Beech, a former adviser to three Conservative universities ministers and chief executive of the London Higher group of institutions, said the decision to review the act was “a sensible move…sending a clear signal to the sector that it has listened to concerns and is reacting appropriately”.

“The duties set to be inferred on the regulator by the Freedom of Speech Act risked making the OfS run before it could walk,” she added. “The decision to pause the act now gives the regulator the time it needs to improve its capability and capacity when it needs first and foremost to be looking out for the sector’s sustainability.”

The Russell Group said universities were “committed to protecting free speech on campus and already have robust measures in place to support freedom of expression”.

“The decision to stop implementation of the act is a sensible and proportionate step given universities and students’ unions were yet to see final guidance from the OfS on new free speech duties despite some requirements of the legislation being due to come into effect next week.”

Last week, a Research Professional News webinar heard from education lawyer Smita Jamdar, a partner at Shakespeare Martineau, who issued a warning on the changes that had been set to come in next week—including a new free speech complaints process.

“Something has to happen about that start date,” she said on 18 July. “Otherwise we’ll just have chaos for a few weeks, and that is not a great way to start a new system.”

Phillipson said that, to enable students to thrive in higher education, she welcomed OfS plans to “introduce strengthened protections for students facing harassment and sexual misconduct, including relating to the use of non-disclosure agreements in such cases by universities and colleges”.

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A roundup of this week’s Funding Insight articles

This week, we profile Blood Cancer UK’s first early career fellowship scheme since the pandemic and learn why understanding who grant reviewers really are can improve the chances of success of any bid.

This week in Funding Insight

Blood Cancer UK changed its name from Bloodwise in 2020. Around that time, because of the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, the charity paused new calls for its fellowship schemes. This year, that support is returning in the shape of Early Career Advancement Fellowships, which offer a maximum of £350,000 for projects lasting up to three years (or five years part time).

The charity says the scheme is for “outstanding early career researchers who are dedicated to pursuing a career in blood cancer research and who are aiming to transition towards independence”. The deadline for applications is 19 September.

Richard Francis, deputy director of research at Blood Cancer UK, explains how the scheme fits into the charity’s reinvigorated grants portfolio and relates what assessors will be looking for in applications.

From the archive: As Funding Insight eases into its summer break, we spare a thought for all our readers who won’t be able to spend as much time away from a computer screen as they might have liked because they have grant application deadlines looming in the coming months.

To help focus your minds, we republish this reflection from May 2021 on who you will be writing for as you work up your bid. As the article makes plain, you won’t be writing for a panel of fearsome, omniscient mega-minds but rather inquisitive, intelligent but time-limited and pressured researchers (and others)—much like you. And that requires a different mindset…

Elsewhere on Research Professional News

Labour tipped to ‘change focus’ on next UKRI leader—Recruitment process well underway before election, but new science minister may have “names up sleeve”

Dsit announces £16m boost for UK biomedical database—Government matches contribution from Amazon Web Services, aiming to benefit medical research

Researchers’ views sought on new EU platform—First European Open Science Cloud platform to be presented to scientific community in October

British Academy makes housing expert its next president—Cambridge-based geographer Susan Smith will head up humanities and social sciences body from July 2025

Volkswagen Foundation offers €10m for Earth sciences—Professorships established to create fresh perspectives on our planet

The Funding Insight email is taking its habitual summer break and the next one will hit your inboxes on 4 September. In the meantime, if you have comments, feedback or suggestions for Funding Insight, or if there are other people in your institution who would like to receive this weekly email, please contact james.brooks@clarivate.com.

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DfE confirms appointment, publishes report on English regulator and considers scrapping free speech act

Education secretary Bridget Phillipson has confirmed that David Behan, former head of the Care Quality Commission, will be appointed interim chair of the Office for Students, the English higher education regulator.

It comes as Behan publishes the findings of his independent review of the OfS, which was commissioned last year by the former government, and as ministers consider repealing free speech legislation passed under the Conservatives.

Behan was chief executive of the Care Quality Commission from 2012 to 2018, and before that served as director general for social care in the Department of Health. He was the first chief inspector of the Commission for Social Care Inspection and was knighted in 2017 for his services to health and care. 

On 26 July, Phillipson said Behan had conducted “a rigorous and thoughtful review”.

The review recommends a sharper regulatory focus on “key priorities, which include monitoring financial sustainability, ensuring quality, protecting public money and regulating in the interests of students,” Phillipson said.

“I also wish to announce that Sir David has been appointed as interim chair of the OfS,” she added. “His role will primarily be to work with the current executive to implement the recommendations of the independent review. The process to appoint a permanent chair has started and will conclude next year.”

James Wharton, a Tory peer who had been chair of the OfS since 2021, stood down following Labour’s landslide general election victory.

In her statement, Phillpson said the government would now “stop further commencement of the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023, in order to consider options, including its repeal”.

“I am aware of concerns that the Act would be burdensome on providers and on the OfS, and I will confirm my long-term plans as soon as possible,” she said. “To enable students to thrive in higher education, I welcome the OfS’s plans to introduce strengthened protections for students facing harassment and sexual misconduct, including relating to the use of non-disclosure agreements in such cases by universities and colleges.”

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A report suggests how the government could prevent universities from going bust

Playbook understands that an interim chair for the Office for Students and other regulatory changes will be announced today in a written ministerial statement.

Imminent action in this area was signalled by education secretary Bridget Phillipson earlier this week when she made it clear in an interview with the BBC’s Today programme that the first response of the new government to the financial problems affecting higher education would be to focus on regulation and the OfS rather than pumping in cash through fee rises or government grants.

Meanwhile, a timely report out today from the think tank Public First—Institution Overboard: Managing the Risk of Disorderly Market Exit in English Higher Education—highlights how much attention the current regulatory regime needs.

It argues that the regime is not set up to cope with any large-scale failure of higher education institutions—either in terms of multiple institutions or one large institution.

This is not just because student protection plans have no force in insolvency law and students no more rights than creditors should an institution go bust, but because the current approach to institutional failure takes no account of the risk of “contagion”, whereby the failure of one institution could affect the behaviour of students, staff and lenders elsewhere in the system.

The report says a failure would have knock-on effects both for the region around the university concerned and for the wider ecosystem of UK teaching and research.

And it calls for the role of the OfS to be rebalanced to prioritise collaboration over competition and to take a more proactive approach towards managing and forecasting financial risk in order to help avoid it. This would also involve student protection plans being strengthened.

Restructuring scheme

The report, written by Jonathan Simons, partner and head of education practice at Public First, and Jess Lister, an associate director, also proposes a new £2.5 billion Higher Education Enhancement and Transformation Scheme to preempt market exits by making repayable loans available to institutions that can “make a compelling case for restructuring”.

This compelling case would rest on meeting six tests: offering a plan for economic growth in the region; protecting the community; having an impact on public service training; affecting the future flow of graduate labour; protecting scientific assets and the research base; and protecting academic specialisms.

Money would be offered upfront in exchange for later cost savings and improvements in productivity, such as better use of research funding. The idea is that it would be a good option for institutions that are perhaps one or two recruitment cycles (say 18 to 24 months) away from real challenges.

For institutions too close to the brink to be saved by such a scheme, the report makes the case for a Special Administration Regime, modelled on that already in place for further education colleges, which should mean that any exit from the sector is properly managed.

This would ensure minimum disruption for existing students should an institution go bust—and the report argues that it could be introduced relatively quickly, although it would require primary legislation.

The problem is that the mere passing of such legislation could knock the confidence of institutions, students and creditors, the report’s authors suggest. They say that other measures, such as the proposed transformation scheme, could be delivered more quickly and at a lower cost.

Finally, the report calls for the appointment of a higher education commissioner at the Department for Education to liaise between the sector and government.

The commissioner would be able to offer support with changes to senior leadership, financial management and health checks or restructuring, as well as being responsible for managing the transformation scheme.

Longer-term stability

In a foreword to the report, Stuart Croft, vice-chancellor and president of the University of Warwick, writes: “The potential ‘market exit’ of a higher education institution is a feature, not a bug, of the current regulatory framework. In practice, exit––orderly or otherwise––of an institution from the sector has not been adequately prepared or planned for. Action is required to both protect students and to ensure that the reputation of the higher education sector is safeguarded.”

He argues that the OfS was set up with too little emphasis on financial sustainability and that while the recommendations in the paper should help stabilise the system, there are also longer-term issues to address.

One of those is the sector’s reliance on international students.

In her BBC interview and later in a speech at King’s College London, Phillipson spoke enthusiastically about the contribution made by these students.

Her words were warmly welcomed by a sector that has blamed less positive rhetoric about international students from the previous government for recent scary falls in their numbers.

Phillipson appeared to signal that with finances stretched and the idea of raising tuition fees politically unpalatable, the government is looking to international students to fill the financial gap.

But Croft warns in today’s report: “We need to be clear-eyed about the future. Student recruitment will continue to get more competitive, and not every UK university will be able to sustain, let alone grow, current levels of international student recruitment.”

The report also warns that an institutional failure could make international students less confident about choosing to study in the UK.

Resizing and reshaping

Concerns about managing market exit have been growing for a while. Smita Jamdar, head of education at the law firm Shakespeare Martineau, told Playbook in June that there was no clear roadmap for how to handle such exits because they depend on how individual institutions have been incorporated.

In its recent annual assessment of the health of the sector, the OfS suggested that mergers could be a solution and predicted that “we might see some changes to the size and shape of the sector, for example through mergers and acquisitions or increased specialisation”.

But the Public First paper adds to warnings from many, including Jamdar, that mergers may not be an easy answer. It recognises that most UK universities are the product of a continual process of merger and integration, such as the gradual merger of art and design, teacher training and nursing schools into universities, and it rejects the idea of preserving the current system in aspic. It warns, however, that such reordering becomes a problem when it reduces students’ choice of courses and institutions, the breadth of research or institutions’ contribution to their local communities.

The paper also rejects the idea of a “backstop”, whereby local institutions are forced to take existing students if an institution closes, on the grounds that it is unreasonable to expect the system to hold enough spare capacity just on the off-chance that a failure happens, and because, unlike customers, students cannot be seamlessly switched between providers.

Controversially, it sees a case for reclassifying universities as part of the public sector should more government intervention be necessary, because, despite the dangers of a loss of autonomy, it considers the dangers of disorderly exit to be so serious.

“Government, policymakers and indeed all citizens benefit from a financially sustainable higher education system that delivers both individual benefit and wider national goals for the country,” it states. “Changes in provider shape and size are acceptable—and even to be welcomed when they come in response to student demand, but they need to be managed in a strategic way, and the systemic impact constantly monitored.”

Susan Lapworth, chief executive of the OfS, said the report “helpfully adds to the debate about how students can best be protected if their institution is no longer able to operate”.

“We are continuing our work to understand the financial position of individual institutions and the steps they are taking to respond to the risks they face. We are particularly focused on ensuring effective student protection planning is taking place where risks are greatest.”

More resources

One problem the report identifies is that the OfS is cautious about its legal and political capacity to take the action needed. It suggests the regulator is likely to need greater direction and statutory guidance, as well as more resources, especially in a case of significant market exit.

In this context, it is interesting that earlier this week, the regulator advertised “multiple roles” for legal advisers, offering “an opportunity to grow your legal expertise by working across our diverse and rapidly evolving organisation on a wide range of regulatory and corporate issues”.

Clearly, then, it anticipates doing some major evolving––and quickly––although it is a little concerning that those appointed to the roles will be expected to grow their legal expertise on the job rather than having it already. And the salary of between £51,844 and £56,662 plus £5,000 allowance and £3,566 London weighting seems on the low side for a qualified solicitor or barrister with regulatory experience, when newly qualified lawyers in London are routinely earning six-figure salaries.

It seems particularly low when their expertise is expected to cover such a wide range of issues, from knowledge of the Higher Education and Research Act to data protection, freedom of information, defamation, human rights, consumer protection, equalities legislation and the higher education regulatory framework.

The government is not short of advice from sector bodies keen to get their key messages across early on in the new regime, and it will be interesting to see how many of the ideas outlined by Public First it takes up.

University Alliance, which represents 16 professional and technical universities, also contributes a report this morning, offering cost-neutral or low-cost ideas for the government to consider in its first 100 days. These range from launching a cross-governmental healthcare education taskforce to increasing student maintenance, removing international students from long-term migration statistics and scrapping “burdensome” freedom of speech regulations.

The fact that a ministerial statement on the OfS is expected today suggests that amid all the clamouring for attention, Phillipson has recognised that help for higher education institutions in serious difficulty is needed urgently.

At the same time, this focus on regulatory support suggests she has few plans to offer the financial kind, which could have prevented the difficulty occurring in the first place.

And finally…

Readers attending degree ceremonies over the summer should be aware that anything can happen, as is made clear in a University of Manchester Magazine interview with Nancy Rothwell, who steps down next week as the university’s vice-chancellor.

“I remember, one degree ceremony, shaking hands with a student who then cartwheeled down the aisle,” she recalls.

“Then another who asked very politely: ‘May I set off a rocket?’ And I said yes, imagining it’d be a small rocket. It wasn’t––it was massive and showered the whole stage in confetti. She didn’t do it above my head, so that was alright.”

Playbook’s advice to Rothwell’s successor Duncan Ivison is that if a graduate asks to set off a rocket at a degree ceremony, just say no.

On Research Professional News today

Emily Twinch reports that the EU must invest in firms at the scale-up stage to stay at the forefront of technological change, according to the bloc’s leading financial institution.

Chris Parr writes that Brunel University London has announced it is to become part of the University of London federation from October.

John Bonner tells us that the national funder UK Research and Innovation has agreed a deal on closer collaboration with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation in Australia.

John Whitfield says that a UK organisation representing early career researchers has launched a scheme to recruit and support young at-risk academics.

Frances Jones writes that the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford are part of a group that has urged the prime minister to make their cities and region the “first UK innovation supercluster”.

She adds that a group representing the European pharmaceutical industry has accepted the final agreement on the European Health Data Space regulation.

Nina Bo Wagner reveals that global crises are driving steady change in universities, according to a European University Association report.

In the news

The Financial Times reports that the science minister has pledged a cybersecurity boost for crucial data troves, and the Universities Superannuation Scheme has warned on future investments after Thames Water losses.

In the Telegraph, the Public First think tank has warned that universities ‘will collapse without a £2.5bn emergency loan pot’, and there’s a look at the best student bank accounts.

In the Times, the University of Cambridge has placated Gaza activists with the promise of an arms investment review.

The Herald covers a prestigious award for a University of Dundee paper on refugee camps, and a Scottish homeless charity is to open new cafés in a university expansion plan.

The day ahead

There will be a House of Commons debate at 9.30am on making Britain a clean energy superpower.

The Playbook would not be possible without Martyn Jones, Chris Parr, Orlen Crawford and Fiona McIntyre.

Thanks for reading. Have a great day.

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Birmingham, Edinburgh, Glasgow, London and Oxford get centres in areas from medical imaging to cybersecurity

The UK government has said it will invest £106 million to create five hubs for R&D in quantum technology.

Peter Kyle, secretary of state at the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (Dsit), will unveil the initiative later today during a visit to the University of Glasgow. That university will lead one hub, focusing on positioning and navigation systems, including the development of new devices.

Kyle said: “These hubs will bridge the gap between brilliant ideas and practical solutions. They will not only transform sectors like healthcare and security, but also create a culture of accelerated innovation that helps to grow our economy.”

“It’s good to see the government making this commitment to quantum technologies so early in office,” said John Bagshaw, vice president for business at the Institute of Physics. “These have the potential to transform our economy across a wide range of sectors, from healthcare to transport, communication to energy and national security.”

A hub at the University of Birmingham will work on sensing, imaging and timing technology with applications in medicine, security and infrastructure. One at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh will specialise in quantum network technology for cybersecurity and distributed computing. Another will host research into quantum computing at the University of Oxford.

The investment will help the UK remain a leader in quantum technology, said Carrie Weidner, a lecturer in quantum engineering at the University of Bristol. “The quantum hubs provide a means for the UK quantum technology community to come together and work towards the shared goal of making practical quantum devices a reality.” 

‘Outstanding team of researchers’

The fifth hub a London-based collaboration between University College London and the University of Cambridge, will work on biomedical sensing, including blood tests and scanners.

“We are bringing together an outstanding team of researchers from academia, the NHS, charities, government, regulators and industry to help accelerate advances in quantum for human health and societal good,” said Rachel McKendry, a chemist at UCL and the hub’s co-director. 

“We also hope to grow an innovation ecosystem working with industry and international networks of excellence with leading researchers worldwide.”

The announcement is "a welcome boost to the UK’s quantum infrastructure", said Andrew Clark, executive director of programmes at the Royal Academy of Engineering.

"The academy has previously advocated for government to set a clearer strategic direction for quantum technologies in the UK," said Clark, "so it is pleasing to see applications in vital sectors like diagnostics, navigation and communications signalled as priorities.” 

Dsit said the investment would contribute to the government’s mission to increase economic growth, reform the NHS and “keep our streets safe” through innovations in cybersecurity.

The initiative will be overseen by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. Its funding will be drawn from the budgets of the EPSRC, Biotechnology and Biological Research Council, Medical Research Council, and National Institute for Health and Care Research.

Update 26/7 – This story was updated after publication with comment from Carrie Weidner and John Bagshaw

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Report on the implications of a university exiting the market finds shortcomings in current protections

The Office for Students’ regulatory approach provides insufficient protection for students in the event of a university exiting the market, according to a new report.

Published on 26 July by policy consultancy Public First and produced in collaboration with the University of Warwick, the paper argues that the current OfS regime fails to consider the possible knock-on effects of institutional insolvency, and that student protection plans—required if a provider wishes to register with the regulator—have “no force in law”.

It calls for a “more proactive approach towards active risk management”, starting with a “rebalancing of the role of the OfS”, so it not only forecast financial risk, but address it too. It should also refocus on the benefits of institutional collaboration as opposed to the encouragement of competition. The report also recommends that student protection plans should be strengthened.

Call for new scheme

Following the regulatory reform, Public First says a £2.5 billion Higher Education Enhancement and Transformation Scheme should be established, offering repayable loans to institutions that can make a make a “compelling case for restructuring their university such as to deliver a more sustainable and high-quality provision”.

There should also be a new Higher Education Commissioner within the Department for Education, to act as a liaison between universities and the government, and a Special Administration Regime for higher education should be created, to “allow for a more orderly form of exit should restructuring not be possible or effective”.

‘Growing risks’

Susan Lapworth, chief executive of the OfS, said: “The OfS’s recent analysis of the financial sustainability of universities and colleges highlighted the growing risks facing the sector. There is increased public discussion of these issues, and this report from Public First helpfully adds to the debate about how students can best be protected if their institution is no longer able to operate.

“We are continuing our work to understand the financial position of individual institutions and the steps they are taking to respond to the risks they face. We are particularly focused on ensuring effective student protection planning is taking place where risks are greatest.”

Jonathan Simons, partner and head of education at Public First, said there was “no playbook for how to manage institutional failure at scale”.

“Given the current political and economic environment, the absence of a plan in current legislation or policy is leading to an unsustainable level of uncertainty for university leaders, for students, and for government,” he said. 

“We hope this report will spark a broader discussion about the need for a range of measures to help stabilise the sector so that any restructuring or exit can be managed in a strategic way.”

‘Action required to protect students’

Stuart Croft, vice-chancellor of the University of Warwick, added that market exit “has not been adequately prepared or planned for”.

“Action is required to both protect students and to ensure that the reputation of the higher education sector is safeguarded,” he said.

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Oxford-Cambridge Supercluster Board chair urges Starmer government to reset relationship with innovation

The Universities of Cambridge and Oxford are part of a group that has urged Keir Starmer to make their cities and region the “first UK innovation supercluster”.

The group of business leaders, universities and investors sent a letter to the new prime minister on 25 July, first reported by the Financial Times, asking the government to transform the region into the “crown jewel” of European innovation.

Andy Williams, chair of the group, which is called the Oxford-Cambridge Supercluster Board, told Research Professional News that all universities in the group signed the letter, including Oxford, Cambridge and Cranfield.

“We see universities as the UK’s major scientific superpower, which is something our developers, scientists and businesses have agreed upon,” Williams, who is also first author of the letter, told RPN.

The group set out its plans to create this supercluster in policy recommendations published on 23 July, which RPN understands were outlined in the letter to the prime minister.

Building a rail link called East West Rail to connect Oxford and Cambridge should be the priority, Williams said.

Other proposals the group put forward include improved R&D tax incentives to attract companies, in line with other countries such as France and Ireland, and the delivery of lab space in the region. These measures would help address ongoing frustration that the UK does not have the right infrastructure to attract science investments, it said.

Innovation reset

Research by the group has shown that, with the proposals, the region could add £50 billion a year to the British economy by 2030, Williams said.

But he also sees this as a “chance to reset the relationship between government and the innovation industry”, to add stability.

“The worst thing you can do for business is chop and change, as it erodes businesses’ confidence in investment,” he said, in reference to Conservative government unwillingness to push through East West Rail.

National benefits

The Oxford-Cambridge region contributes 7 per cent of UK GDP, Williams said, arguing that investment in this area will spread to other regions.

“We’re not trying to be exclusive but we have to start somewhere, aiming to ultimately spread to a UK supercluster,” he said.

The group is already working with Midlands Innovation, a partnership of Midlands universities.

“We’re at an interim period—we’re starting off with specific targets for the Oxford-Cambridge region. Then, ultimately, we’d like to broaden it everywhere,” Williams added.

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Council for At-Risk Academics and body representing young researchers team up to support academics

A UK organisation representing early career researchers has launched a scheme to recruit and support young at-risk academics.

The UK Young Academy aims to offer mentoring, training, career support and advocacy for “academics and professionals from marginalised and underrepresented communities”, it said in its announcement of the scheme, released today.

The academy is running the initiative in collaboration with the Council for At-Risk Academics (Cara), a UK organisation supporting exiled and refugee researchers. Scholars who are part of Cara’s network now have their own route to joining the academy, with Cara checking applicants’ eligibility.

The academy said it will “offer membership places to at-risk academics, establish a mentorship scheme and annual workshops, ensure visibility of academic resources, and help academics integrate into UK organisations and institutions”.

The scheme is “a significant commitment to supporting at-risk, early career individuals across diverse sectors” that will “provide essential mentoring opportunities and support their integration into UK academic networks”, said Linda Oyama, a member of the UK Young Academy’s executive group and a biologist at Queen’s University Belfast.

Similar initiatives

The new programme follows similar initiatives by other young academies, including in Scotland and Canada. It is being led by two existing UK Young Academy members: Ana Blanco Alvarez, an engineering researcher at Loughborough University; and biologist Amit Pujari of the University of Hertfordshire.

The UK Young Academy, established in 2022, is open to early career researchers as well as professionals in other fields. It is a joint initiative of the UK’s seven senior academies for different disciplines and nations, overseen by the Royal Society. As well as providing professional support, it aims to help early career researchers become involved in policy.

The academy also opened applications for its general membership, which close on 9 October.

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Blood Cancer UK returns to offering fellowships after a pandemic-induced break

Top tips

• All bids must excel on three elements: the research project, the team and the training.
• Patient assessment of bids is an important step in the process.
• Engage with patients and the public as early as possible.
• Seek to collaborate and consult with specialists in your field.
• Take care over the statistical elements of your bid.

Blood Cancer UK changed its name from Bloodwise in 2020. Around that time, because of the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, the charity paused new calls for its fellowship schemes. This year, that support is returning in the shape of Early Career Advancement Fellowships, which offer a maximum of £350,000 for projects lasting up to three years (or five years part time).

The charity says the scheme is for “outstanding early career researchers who are dedicated to pursuing a career in blood cancer research and who are aiming to transition towards independence”. The deadline for applications is 19 September.

Richard Francis, deputy director of research at Blood Cancer UK, explains how the scheme fits into the charity’s reinvigorated grants portfolio and relates what assessors will be looking for in applications.

Is this a new scheme for Blood Cancer UK?

Yes, it is. We do have a long history of funding fellowships to advance people’s careers, but we actually stopped almost five years ago. Because of the pandemic, we weren’t able to restart any of that funding, but the moment is right now and we’ve got really big ambitions to grow our research budget and portfolio.

In the meantime, we’ve been diversifying the ways that we fund research across a number of schemes, and this is partly to give researchers suitable opportunities for funding at different levels, depending on what they want to do and the research questions they want to answer.

So we’re restarting the fellowships after quite a long break, with real enthusiasm for the Early Career Advancement Fellowships because we know that there is a genuine need to help blood cancer researchers starting out on their path towards independence.

How do you define an “outstanding” early career researcher? 

We are looking for people who have the potential to lead their field within blood cancer research. To impress upon reviewers that you can do that, you need to cover a number of areas. First, the project must answer an important, relevant question to people affected by cancer. Second, we must see the support of a network of supervisors and mentors, typically from a university or research institution. Third, there must be evidence of thought about the training required to realise any fellowship or career development skills, as well as leadership—how will this fellowship help you develop to potentially manage a research team in the future? 

How are applications assessed? 

The application process involves external peer reviews, input from a patient voice group and interviews. First, the external peer review will assess the research project and the applicant’s technical expertise. Then it will go to the patient voice group, who will shortlist selected candidates to interview. Finally, our panel will see how good of a fit they are for the scheme, the quality of their application and the likelihood of their status as a potential star in blood cancer research.  

Are there any eligibility criteria you’d like to highlight? 

Within the scheme, we’ve asked people to be six years post-PhD, but we have said we will be flexible on that. Particularly during the Covid-19 pandemic, people had to take time out from their research. Or people might have had a break due to, for example, having a child, or maybe they took on greater clinical responsibilities.

If there’s anything in the eligibility criteria that people are unclear about or would like to discuss further, we do recommend they get in touch with us. It’s often best to address individual eligibility questions directly in this way.

Is there anything applicants can do to make their bids shine?

Yes, I’ve got a couple of pieces of advice here. First, engage with the public. One of the things that we value most is high-quality patient and public involvement. As a charity, we are supported by patients and work closely with our patient voice groups.

Even at the earliest stages of developing your application, I would suggest trying to work with any groups of patients. The charity can help with that, advise you and match you up with people. We know that universities and research groups do already have patient groups they consult with, but we also work with those groups and it’s probably best you go through us to match you up. 

My second tip is to collaborate. Try to find other people who you haven’t interacted with before that are working in similar or related areas. This will help ensure that you have the right methodologies for your research.

Are there any recurrent missteps you see on Blood Cancer UK bids? 

People often don’t have the right statistical expertise. If your work is proposing any kind of sample size, in preclinical models or clinical work, ensure you verify the statistics. Make sure all your numbers and statistical methods are as good as they can be. 

Is the £350,000 maximum a hard limit?  

Yes, it is. We realise that people might want to use it in different ways and we try to be open to that. And we expect that quite a large proportion of the funding amount will go towards salary costs. 

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UKRI and CSIRO sign agreement to collaborate on addressing global challenges

The national funder UK Research and Innovation has agreed a deal on closer collaboration with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation in Australia.

UKRI and CSIRO announced the signing of a memorandum of understanding on 24 July, saying they will work together to address global challenges and “drive innovations that not only benefit the UK and Australia but also contribute to the global community”.

The two agencies will provide each other with access to technical expertise and share resources, equipment and facilities. Two areas in which they are already collaborating are clean energy and space research. 

UKRI chief executive Ottoline Leyser said: “This partnership with CSIRO aligns perfectly with our strategy to amplify the impact of the research and innovation we support.

“By collaborating on key areas like Earth observation and clean energy, we can deliver transformative solutions that tackle global challenges and enhance prosperity for both the UK and Australia.”

CSIRO chief executive Doug Hilton added: “Science and research are strengthened by broad networks and deep connections, so sharing those between CSIRO and UKRI will lift the benefit to both our nations.”

Existing projects

The agreement aims to build on existing collaborations such as the AquaWatch project, created to provide regular updates and forecasts of coastal water quality. CSIRO scientists have been working with colleagues from the UKRI Science and Technology Facilities Council’s RAL Space laboratory in a study at Plymouth Sound in Devon.

A second project, involving Aberystwyth University scientists, is using satellite observations to monitor water quality in Cardigan Bay, Wales.

The two national agencies are also involved in multilateral projects on climate change and clean energy with the US National Science Foundation and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

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West London institution will become 18th member

Brunel University London has announced it is to become part of the University of London federation from October this year.

Brunel will become the 17th member of the University of London, joining current members including King’s College London, Soas and University College London.

Although the federation currently has 17 members, two of them—City, University of London and St George’s, University of London—will merge to form City St George’s, University of London on 1 August, taking membership down to 16 for a short period. The federation serves more than 250,000 students from 190 countries and, collectively, member universities employ more than 50,000 members of staff.   

University of London institutions collaborate on “a range of initiatives including transnational education programmes, online learning, research and knowledge exchange”, the federation said in a statement. It added that Brunel’s “commitment to addressing the needs and challenges of society—both in London and globally—aligned well with the University of London and the social mission of the federation”.

Wendy Thomson, vice-chancellor of the University of London, said Brunel has a “strong global outlook”, and that its education and research portfolio—particularly in engineering and sciences—will “enable the federation to achieve even greater impact across London and beyond”.

Andrew Jones, vice-chancellor and president of Brunel University London, said: “We’re absolutely delighted to be joining such an esteemed and historic federation of research-intensive universities.”

‘Sharing resources’

Diana Beech, chief executive of the London Higher group of universities, said that universities are “driven by partnerships and collaboration, none more so than in London”.

“As challenges mount for the sector, it is only natural that higher education institutions will seek alliances in established networks [such as the University of London], both to share experiences and resources,” she said.

“The decision of Brunel to join the University of London holds advantages for both parties: it firmly puts London in the Brunel brand as one of England’s few universities, which is named after a person rather than a place, and it expands the University of London’s footprint into the west of the city.”

Beech said that London Higher “looks forward to supporting Brunel, the University of London and its other constituent colleges to establish vital relationships with the wider London higher education landscape”.

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Why you might be writing funding bids with the wrong readers in mind

As Funding Insight eases into its summer break, we spare a thought for all our readers who won’t be able to spend as much time away from a computer screen as they might have liked because they have grant application deadlines looming in the coming months.

To help focus your minds, we republish this reflection from May 2021 on who you will be writing for as you work up your bid. As the article makes plain, you won’t be writing for a panel of fearsome, omniscient mega-minds but rather inquisitive, intelligent but time-limited and pressured researchers (and others), much like you. And that requires a different mindset…

When you’re writing a research grant application, who are you writing for? And who should you be writing for? Considering these questions matters because tailoring your bid to suit the needs of its key audience (peer reviewers and panel members) will raise its chances of getting funded. But before you focus on who you are writing for, you might have to admit that a mixture of education and wishful thinking has led you to write for the wrong people.

You are not writing for teacher 

For most of our time in formal education, we write for an audience of one: for a teacher at school, a tutor at university and external examiners at crunch moments. We would write about a topic that our sole reader knew more about than we did, with the purpose of convincing her to grade our knowledge of one of her specialist areas as highly as possible.

This starts to change through masters or PhD theses and into early career and academic publications and grant proposals. You’re no longer writing for the all-knowing, functionally omniscient reader: the locus of expertise has started to shift. As a grant applicants you are still writing for highly skilled and knowledgeable people, but their expertise is not the same as yours. The chances are that you—not teacher, not reviewer—are now the expert in the topic you are writing about.

To quote Darth Vader as he battles his former mentor Obi-Wan Kenobi: “The circle is now complete. When I left you I was but the learner. Now, I am the master.” Now you are the master, you need to write like the master, not for the master.

You are not writing for your ideal reviewer

Because even if she exists, she’s probably too busy. Or conflicted. Or the funder’s review scheme doesn’t know who she is. Ask anyone who has—like me—served on a funding panel, and you’ll find decisions are taken on each application relatively quicky, especially compared to the time they take to write. There will not be a special one-day conference convened to discuss the merits of your proposal, and the scrutiny it will be subjected to will be less ‘fine-toothed comb’ and more ‘quick onceover with the clippers’ until a broadly defensible result is achieved.

Now we can return to our original question: who are you writing for?

You are writing for busy, best-available-reviewers

Your reviewers are mostly researchers too. And as researchers they’re under much the same pressures you are, only they’ve also got one or a whole bunch of proposals to review. It’s not that different from having a pile of marking to do, only they’re not the expert. They’re an expert, just not on every subject contained in that pile of work. As an applicant, you’d be well advised to make life as easy as possible for them by expressing your ideas as clearly and unambiguously as possible.

But to what end? Now you know your audience a bit better it’s worth considering the effect you want your text to have on them, or in existential terms…

What are you trying to achieve?

In your grant application, you’re trying to achieve three things—explain, inspire and reassure—in order to persuade.

1. Explain

Remember, you’re the master now, you can’t assume the reviewer knows the field as well as you do. So you need to explain what you propose to do: what are your research questions/hypothesis and methods, why are these the right methods, and how does the whole thing hang together as a coherent package? 

I don’t know who first said this, but a really well-written application flatters the reader into thinking she understands it, while a poorly written one beats her over the head with her own ignorance. As a non-academic, I don’t expect to understand how a technical proposal works, but I expect to understand what it’s for.

This is one of the hardest things for researchers new to grant writing to get right. Many drafts I see start at the wrong level of focus—they’ve zoomed in much too closely onto the key details that are most exercising the applicant but lack any kind of broader context or overview and end up functionally incomprehensible. Reviewers won’t recommend funding they can’t understand.

2. Inspire

Many early draft applications I see don’t adequately explain the novelty of what’s proposed, what the contribution of the programme of work will be, nor why it matters. When I ask, applicants will often look confused because to them, it’s obvious. It’s not, because it’s implicit. It needs to be explicit. Don’t leave your busy, best-available-reviewer to puzzle it out for herself.  Don’t overclaim, don’t overhype, but don’t undersell your work either. If you’re unable to clearly articulate the significance, novelty and contribution of your proposal, it’s too soon to apply for funding.

3. Reassure

Don’t submit research applications, submit research plans. You’re asking a funder to take a punt on your proposal ahead of others, so you need to make the funding panel feel confident about that decision. You do this by concisely and efficiently citing the right literature, by having the right research team with appropriate track records, and by producing robust, high-quality responses to the more administrative parts of the form. You can also reassure with your risk management plans, especially your plan Bs for if an experiment doesn’t produce the finding you predict. How might you recalibrate or refocus the project?

4. Persuade

Funding is competitive. There are more good ideas than there is funding for good ideas. It’s not like an A grade at school or a driving licence, or even a PhD, where there is an unlimited number available and where everyone who deserves one can have one. It’s not enough to be good, you need to finish in the top tier to get funding. You need to be more persuasive about the excellence of your proposal than the competition.

You can’t control what other applications will go to the same panel for funding, nor their respective merits. But you can give yourself the best possible chance by making sure your application is pitched at your actual audience, the best-available-reviewer—not the all-knowing teacher, your PhD supervisor or Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Adam Golberg is strategic research development manager (research growth) at the University of Nottingham. He tweets @Cash4Questions and blogs at socialscienceresearchfunding.co.uk.

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Btecs get a reprieve, UUK plans a blueprint and EDSK bows out

We had hoped that Bridget Phillipson would use the occasion of her first education questions as secretary of state to announce the appointment of an interim chair of the Office for Students. No such luck.

However, she did say that the new government would press pause on the defunding of Btec qualifications as planned by the Conservatives. Around one in six university entrants gain access to their degree programme through Btec certification.

There will now be a review of post-16 vocational routes at level 3 and below, to be completed by the end of the year. That’s separate from any wider post-16 review that will take in university funding.

Chris Parr was listening in to the session in the Commons and tells us that Phillipson said the government is unable to give a commitment to rejoining Erasmus+. That is despite her warm words on Tuesday about international exchanges and British universities being open to the world, and a King’s speech that spoke of restoring relations with the EU.

Labour is still enjoying its post-election honeymoon period and can stick to that campaign position for now. But the thing about saying you will fix the inherited problems of higher education is that at some point you will actually have to fix them, and not having a functioning international exchange programme for universities in England is one of those problems.

Pre-publicity

For those of you looking for something to sink your teeth into once your summer beach reading has been put to one side, Universities UK has announced that it will be releasing a blueprint for higher education in the autumn. An extensive paper to be published after the holidays will explore the role of universities in addressing the new government’s priorities “and some of the public’s biggest concerns”.

Given that some of the public’s biggest concerns in the autumn will include the price of school uniforms and when the new series of Strictly begins, this could be quite an exciting paper. If UUK can also help Labour understand where “the highest sustained growth in the G7” is going to come from without a large programme of public spending or rejoining the European single market, the blueprint should be a bestseller.

Universities’ role in the long-sought-after economic growth will be central to the analysis by a panel of experts from within and outside higher education. There will be contributions from former Bank of England chief economist Andy Haldane, former universities and science minister David Willetts, former almost everything Peter Mandelson and Confederation of British Industry chief executive Rain Newton-Smith.

Those who know little of the mysteries of GDP but something of the attention span of newspaper editors might be wondering why UUK is preannouncing the publication at the end of July. This is the sort of product tease usually reserved for the next Dan Brown novel.

We guess UUK knows what it is doing, given its history of successful campaign launches such as Made at Uni and the 100 Faces of first-in-family graduates, both of which sunk faster than a cheese soufflé on Celebrity Bake Off. On Tuesday morning, the panel, chaired by UUK president and University of St Andrews vice-chancellor Sally Mapstone, met “to discuss the action needed from the new government and from higher education itself to ensure universities deliver their potential”.

According to UUK, the blueprint will explore how universities can tackle the things the public cares about most, such as the NHS, the economy, climate change and who is going to replace Gareth Southgate as England manager (we may have made that last one up). Universities are of course central to the delivery of NHS services and the training of the health workforce.

Mapstone said the blueprint “sets out how universities can stimulate growth, drive innovation and open up opportunity…Universities are in an ideal position to help deliver on the government’s growth ambitions, but action is needed to ensure this great work can continue with the velocity and depth that are necessary.” That all sounds grand but hardly goes into any more detail on where the growth is coming from than Labour’s own lightweight manifesto.

We are told Mandelson will be “leading” a chapter on research and development. We assume that leading is in some way different from writing.

In a sneak peek, Mandelson says that “Britain has a world-class research base and now is the time to step up its translation into new UK industry and supply chains. Success depends on putting finance capital together with the talent in our universities. This has to be central to all the government says and does.”

That’s reassuring, because obviously former science minister George Freeman and the Conservative government never thought about that. While universities are capable of doing all sorts of things to contribute to society and the economy—from social mobility and public sector workforce training to spinout companies and supporting small businesses—none of them are going to happen while the sector is in the grip of a funding crisis, with multiple redundancy programmes cropping up from Aberdeen to Canterbury.

This week, the education secretary told universities that there is no extra money coming from Whitehall and that they should look to the recruitment of international students and better budget management. However, it is precisely the knowledge exchange, civic partnerships and industry collaboration that are falling by the wayside as universities are forced by economic circumstances to retreat into their core functions of teaching and research.

Familiar thinking

The UUK blueprint will be published this autumn with a view to influencing the new government’s first spending review. But we have been hearing for years about universities’ potential to contribute to economic growth. The reality is, as reported by the National Centre for Universities and Business, that the number of higher education and industry collaborations and the value of direct inward investment have been in reverse since Brexit and the pandemic.

It is obviously a good thing that university bosses are thinking about ways in which the sector can be visible and useful to the new government, which has many other demands on its attention right now. But based on the pre-release publicity, the autumn blueprint sounds a lot like past efforts in this space when the Conservatives were in office.

Let’s hope there is more to it than that. If the panellists are leading or writing their chapters over the summer, they could do worse than look at a report from earlier this month by the Centre for Economic Performance, based at the London School of Economics and Political Science, which argued that the economy needs more graduates, not fewer.

The report’s authors say: “If the UK economy is to grow, it is especially important that ‘strategic sectors’ (those in which the UK has a comparative advantage) are supported. These sectors—which include financial and business services, the creative and cultural sector and life sciences—employ a much higher fraction of graduates than the rest of the economy.”

A House of Lords Library analysis suggests that the creative industries are worth £126 billion to the UK economy and employ nearly 2.4 million people. Without universities, there would be little workforce training in this area and much less in the way of partnerships and original knowledge production.

In contrast, our world-class life sciences are worth about £13bn and employ less than 1 per cent of the UK workforce. Yet it is university arts provision that is taking knocks from which it may never recover during the ongoing sustainability crisis.

This is not to argue against investment in science—obviously that would be nuts. Rather, it is to hope that the UUK blueprint does not repeat the tired tropes of the past 14 years but offers some genuinely different and wider thinking about the actual economy the UK has rather than the one that think tanks and politicians would like us to have.

In the absence of a functioning trade arrangement with our nearest economic bloc, growth will not come easily through unobtainable aspirations for a global status in R&D that is beyond the resources of our struggling public finances and beleaguered research institutions. Rather, growth will come from supporting the things that we already do well, such as services and the cultural industries. These sectors of the economy require active measures such as youth mobility, fewer visa restrictions, more graduates and international exchanges.

Whether after 14 years of the service sector being beaten up, universities or the new government are actually prepared to support the priority industries that provide the UK economy with a competitive advantage remains to be seen. It is to be hoped that the appointment of Chris Bryant as a minister between the science and culture departments provides a bridge to enable an attitude towards universities and economic growth that does not merely repeat the orthodoxy and exclusions of past thinking.

And finally…

A report out this week—Augar Reviewed: Why Post-18 Education in England is Still Broken and How to Fix It—is the final contribution to the thought-o-sphere from the think tank EDSK. Director Tom Richmond announced last week that with the general election taking place and a new government coming in, the education think tank’s journey has come to an end.

Its review of life after Augar is a great way for EDSK to bid farewell to the education landscape it has graced for the past decade. In its final advice to the sector, it calls for the creation of an independent body called the National Tertiary Education Council to oversee all post-18 provision.

It also recommends that tuition fees in England be reduced to £6,000 per year and supplemented by £5bn of direct government funding. EDSK wants to see the Lifelong Learning Entitlement working across the entire tertiary portfolio, allowing movement between further and higher education.

There is much to ponder in the report, including the role of devolved mayoralties and employers in shaping tertiary offers. EDSK says: “Other countries such as Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, Scotland and Wales have already set off on their journey towards a more coherent, collaborative, equitable and sustainable tertiary system, even if that means challenging the orthodoxies and legacies that dominated such conversations in the past. It is now time for England to do the same.”

Chris Parr has been reading the report for us and says the think tank is really arguing that the dominance of universities needs to be addressed for the entire tertiary ecosystem to flourish.

Skills minister Jacqui Smith could do worse than pack a copy of the EDSK report along with the factor 50 as she heads for the airport this summer. We hope that Richmond enjoys a well-deserved break after his years of service to policy formation and think-tankery.

On Research Professional News today

Chris Parr reports that there should be “no doubt” that international students are welcome in the UK, education secretary Bridget Phillipson has said, and she has announced that plans to defund some Btec qualifications have been paused pending a review.

Chris adds that the “inescapable dominance” of universities is undermining the value and availability of other post-18 qualifications, the EDSK think tank has said.

Harriet Swain ponders how Labour could reshape the university sector.

Frances Jones tells us that the Labour government is likely to “refresh” its list of candidates being considered for UK Research and Innovation’s next chief executive, and the UK’s spending watchdog has questioned whether the nation gets value for money from its membership of the European Space Agency.

Frances also covers a £16 million boost for a UK biomedical database.

Emily Twinch reveals that a collaboration involving the European Commission, working to create a platform for European researchers to share information and services, is seeking views from researchers on interest and readiness for the service.

Emily adds that UK visa costs for cancer scientists have risen by 44 per cent in a year.

Nina Bo Wagner writes that organisations representing European academic libraries and repositories are seeking input on their future role.

Marcus Munafò says that internal meta research units could help tackle challenges of resourcing and culture.

Paul Harris writes that Australian Labor’s reset of higher education policy is ambitious but incremental.

Pranesh Narayanan argues that reversing decades of decline in UK manufacturing means focusing R&D on imitation and adaptation.

In the news

The BBC reports that a Gaza protest camp is set to disband after a University of Cambridge offer, Keele University is holding a football tournament for refugees, and there’s a profile of Btecs.

In the Financial Times, business and university leaders have urged the revival of an Oxford-Cambridge high-tech growth plan.

The Telegraph says that former Pakistan prime minister Imran Khan is to run for chancellor of the University of Oxford from prison, lecturers ‘should give up generous pensions to save universities’, and a comment piece says that the University of Cambridge is in a state of moral collapse.

In the Times, the student accommodation provider Unite Group is seeking an extra £450m for expansion.

A comment piece in the Spectator says that letting the worst universities collapse would be an act of kindness.

The New Statesman has a comment piece saying that those graduating this summer should consider the generations to come.

The day ahead

At 10am, the Quality Assurance Agency has an online introduction to international programme accreditation.

The Playbook would not be possible without Martyn Jones, Harriet Swain, Chris Parr, Orlen Crawford and Fiona McIntyre.

Thanks for reading. Have a great day.

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Cancer Research UK urges government to reduce fees, as bill across four institutes “nears £700,000”

Cancer Research UK is calling on the new UK government to reduce visa fees for scientists, saying the cost for its researchers is estimated to have risen 44 per cent in the last financial year.

The charity said the four institutes it funds expect to spend a total of £687,674 in 2023-24 on work and study visa costs, up 44 per cent from 2022-23.

In October last year, the Conservative government increased work visa fees by 15 per cent, family visas by 20 per cent and student visas by 25 per cent. 

Ian Walker, executive director of policy, information and communications at Cancer Research UK, said: “Scientists are having to fork out thousands of pounds upfront to have their visa applications considered, while the research institutes that want them here are having to move vital funds away from labs to support scientists to meet these increased costs.”

‘Reverse the fee increase’

Walker urged the Home Office to reverse the fee increases and start a full-scale review of the impact of the immigration system for recruiting international researchers. “This review should look at the visa systems of all countries and examine further options to cut visa fees to attract more researchers to come here,” he suggested.

The world’s most-talented scientists are being deterred from coming to the UK because of “inflation-busting increases”, he suggested.

Walker said: “We need to compete for the world’s best scientists to deliver more world-class research, which will boost the economy, reduce pressure on the NHS and deliver better treatment for patients.”

Lab budgets have recently been impacted by high inflation, the cancer charity pointed out, adding that the fee increases were “taking away vital funds from frontline research”.

Visa spend increases

The estimated increases in visa spend across the institutes were:
• £501,000 in 2023-24 compared with £350,000 in 2022-23 at the Francis Crick Institute, the largest institute the charity works with—a 43 per cent increase
• £39,675 compared with £27,150 at the Cancer Research UK Manchester Institute—a 46 per cent increase 
• £65,793 compared with £43,687 at the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute—a 51 per cent increase
• £81,206 compared with £56,407 at the Cancer Research UK Scotland Institute—a 44 per cent increase

One of the international scientists who came to the UK to work at the Manchester Institute said: “Applying for a visa to come to the UK [is] complicated, confusing and costly. If we carry on like this, the UK is at real risk of losing out on highly talented scientists to other countries with more accommodating immigration policies.”

Cancer Research UK highlighted that analysis commissioned by the Royal Society concluded UK visa costs are up to 17 times higher than the average for other leading research nations.

Last year it commissioned Opinium to survey 3,027 UK adults and found that 73 per cent of respondents would support the government making it easier for medical researchers and scientists to work in the UK. The online survey was carried out between May and June last year.

The Home Office has been contacted for comment.

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Government matches contribution from Amazon Web Services, aiming to benefit medical research

The biomedical database known as UK Biobank is to receive a boost worth around £16 million to upgrade how it stores and uses health data.

Science and technology secretary Peter Kyle announced on 25 July that the cloud computing company Amazon Web Services will provide cloud computing credits worth $10m (£7.7m), which will be matched by £8m in funding from the government.

A statement from the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology said that this investment will benefit research into new ways to prevent, diagnose and treat diseases such as dementia, Parkinson’s and cancer.

The Amazon Web Services investment will also give UK Biobank access to storage and other services such as artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Private sector partnership

Kyle said the investment meant that UK Biobank has “the cloud infrastructure it needs” to underpin its activities.

The announcement adds to the £32m that had already been provided for the database by the government and two philanthropists: Eric Schmidt, former chief executive of Google; and Kenneth Griffin, founder of the hedge fund Citadel.

Science minister Patrick Vallance said: “Advances in science and health succeed best when we work together—and that applies to close partnership with the private sector as well. Amazon Web Services’ contribution—recognising the unique value of UK Biobank’s work—shows the value these partnerships can unlock and precisely why we want to build even closer relationships to tackle healthcare challenges and unlock growth.”

Kyle added: “This is just the start of our plan to work hand in hand with industry and academia to harness the power of life sciences to grow our economy and boost healthcare.”

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Education secretary announces review of level 3 qualifications

The UK’s education secretary has announced that plans to defund some Btec qualifications, committed to by the previous government, have been paused pending a review.

Speaking in the House of Commons on 24 July, Bridget Phillipson announced a “short pause and review of post-16 qualification reform at level 3 and below”. She confirmed that the defunding schedule “will be paused”.

Some Btec qualifications—those deemed to overlap with the topics covered by the new T-levels—were due to be defunded from next week, essentially making them unviable. This had been heavily criticised by experts who argued that Btecs are respected qualifications that are particularly valued by students from disadvantaged backgrounds.

In an accompanying post on the social media site X, Phillipson said the government remained committed to the rollout of T-levels and that the review of level 3 qualifications will conclude “by the end of the year”. 

Universities and Erasmus+

“Post-16 education is all about giving learners the power to make choices that are right for them,” Phillipson said. “For many, that will be university, and I am immensely proud of our world-leading universities—they are shining lights of learning.

“But their future has been left in darkness for too long—this must and will change. Under this government, universities [will be] valued as a public good, not treated as a political battleground. We will move decisively to establish certainty and sustainability, securing our universities as engines of growth, excellence and opportunity.”

Elsewhere in the debate, Phillipson was asked if the UK would be rejoining the EU’s Erasmus+ student mobility programme, but she said that this was not something to which the government could commit.  

In response

Qasim Hussain, UK vice-president, National Union of Students:

“We are so pleased to that the government has decided to pause and review the plan to scrap Btecs. Reforming vocational qualifications shouldn’t mean reducing choices. The development of T-levels does not necessitate the scrapping of Btecs; they fulfil the various learning needs of different students.

“Students who choose vocational education should have the same amount of choice as students who choose academic education. For this reason, we believe Btecs are an important part of our further education landscape.”

Jo Grady, general secretary, University and College Union:

“We are delighted Labour has heeded our call to keep Btecs, putting on hold Tory plans to close off this key route into higher education for working-class students. This decision means students will not have their post-16 options needlessly restricted. Btecs are especially important for widening participation, as Black and Asian students are more likely to use them to get to university.

“Educators will now be able to contribute fully to the review, which we hope will recommend that colleges keep their existing Btec provision and build upon it, rather than scrapping these crucial qualifications.”

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Report urges government to slash fees to £6,000 and redistribute resources to FE and apprenticeships

The “inescapable dominance” of universities is undermining the value and availability of other post-18 qualifications, the EDSK think tank has said in its final report before it shuts down for good. 

The report—titled ‘Augar Reviewed’—calls on the new government to cut all tuition fees in England to £6,000 a year as part of a “major rethink of how students and institutions are funded”.

It also claims there are “underlying imbalances, inconsistencies and inequities” in the way that higher education, further education and apprenticeships are funded.

“If the new Labour government wants to improve economic growth and productivity, increasing the skill levels of workers of all ages through a more effective and responsive approach to education and training will surely be a critical part of their agenda,” the report states. “Although HE will undoubtedly play an important role in such efforts, FE and apprenticeships could (and should) play a central role as well.”

It adds that “the dominance of higher in tertiary education is inescapable”, and criticises the increased investment in universities over the past 20 years. The report also criticises the fact that students in higher education are eligible for maintenance loans of up to £13,000, whereas those on higher-level further education programmes are not.

On a pedestal

EDSK concludes that student loans should be reformed so that they operate more like a graduate tax, with higher repayments from the highest-earning graduates. Such a change, it says, would free up £2 billion for a new ‘Student Support Fund’ to be distributed to universities and colleges to support disadvantaged students.

Tom Richmond, director of EDSK and co-author of the report, said: “Our post-18 education system will never reach its full potential in terms of driving economic growth and productivity if full-time university degrees continue to be placed on a pedestal above other qualifications and courses.

“Vital as universities are for delivering education and training, it is time to end the enduring bias towards higher education in the way that we fund institutions and students.”

On 18 July, Richmond announced the report would be EDSK’s last. “A big thanks also to everyone who has taken the time to read our reports, attend our events, salute the puns in our report titles or share their insights and expertise with us—it’s all been enormously appreciated,” he said.

EDSK, short for education and skills, was founded in 2019 as a non-partisan, non-profit think tank.

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Education secretary moves to reassure sector on overseas recruitment

There should be “no doubt” that international students are welcome in the UK, the education secretary Bridget Phillipson has said, signalling a shift from the rhetoric and policy of the Conservative government.

In a speech at the Embassy Education Conference on 23 July, Phillipson said she wanted to “set the record straight on international students” after what she called mixed messaging from previous governments.

Earlier this year, the then Conservative government said it would retain the graduate route visa in its current form, but that the system was “under review”. It also announced plans to make it more challenging for universities to sponsor visas and to crack down on international student recruitment agents.

In January, new legislation prevented most students from bringing dependants with them to the UK, resulting in a big fall in applications from overseas. While the new government has not made any commitment to undoing the restrictions currently in place, Phillipson’s speech appears to have poured cold water on any further tightening of the rules.

‘Political footballs’

“For too long, international students have been treated as political footballs, not valued guests—their fees welcomed but their presence resented; exploited for cheap headlines, not cherished for all they bring to our communities,” the education secretary said. “This government will take a different approach… be in no doubt: international students are welcome in the UK.”

Phillipson said she wanted to put education “at the forefront of national life”, adding that universities are “a public good, not a political battleground”.

“These people are brave,” she said of students who choose to study outside their home nation. “They move to a new culture, far away from their homes and their families. They take a leap of faith, hoping to develop new skills and chase new horizons, and I am enormously proud that so many want to take that leap here in the UK.”

She said the new government would do “everything we can to help them succeed”. 

Support for the graduate route

“That’s why we offer the opportunity to remain in the UK on a graduate visa for two years after their studies end—or three for PhDs—to work, to live, and to contribute,” Phillipson added, in words that will be welcomed by sector leaders wanting signals of Labour support for the graduate route.

“While this government is committed to managing migration carefully, international students will always be welcome in this country,” she said. “The UK wouldn’t be the same without them.”

Phillipson said the government would look to build stronger “education partnerships” with countries around the world, to allow universities to “deliver courses across borders”.

“Education must be at the forefront of tackling the major global challenges of our time,” she said. “Artificial intelligence, climate change, poverty, misinformation, polarisation, war and instability… Education puts us on the path to freedom.”

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This week: calls for postgrad childcare support, UKRI funds top emerging talent, support for Ukraine and more

‘Fatal flaws’ in pandemic preparation

Scientific advice to the UK government in the lead-up to the pandemic was too narrow, according to the Covid-19 inquiry’s damning first report. The report pointed to “fatal strategic flaws underpinning the assessment of the risks faced by the UK”, arguing that the government’s “sole pandemic strategy, from 2011, was outdated and lacked adaptability” and that there was “a damaging absence of focus on the measures, interventions and infrastructure required in the event of a pandemic”. Ministers, said the report, “were not presented with a broad enough range of scientific opinion and policy options, and failed to challenge sufficiently the advice they did receive”. Advisers, meanwhile, “did not have sufficient freedom and autonomy to express dissenting views”. In her introduction, inquiry chair Heather Hallett called for radical reform. 

Full story

Support for Ukraine

Science minister Patrick Vallance has reaffirmed the UK government’s support for the Ukrainian science community. Speaking at a seminar at the Royal Society, Vallance said the government intended to “open up the UK science sector with meaningful partnerships and stand in solidarity with Ukraine against Russia’s illegal invasion”. The seminar, which was attended by a representative from the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine, cemented an agreement between the two countries to collaborate on research. Vallance said: “We are committed to working with Ukrainian experts as they rebuild and reform their research and development ecosystem.” The UK has provided nearly £13 million via the Researchers at Risk scheme, which has given about 180 Ukraine-based researchers academic posts in the UK since Russia’s full invasion of the country over two years ago.  

Full story

King’s speech big on tech

The Labour government has set out plans in the King’s speech to create an Industrial Strategy Council and introduce legislation on artificial intelligence. The speech said the government “will seek to establish the appropriate legislation to place requirements on those working to develop the most powerful AI models”. A Digital Information and Smart Data bill was also promised to “help scientists and researchers make more life-enhancing discoveries by improving our data laws”. The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology will lead on the bill, as well as on a Cyber Security and Resilience bill. Josh Burke, senior policy fellow at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, said the speech had “policies that are examples of the change we need”, but he criticised it for the “scant attention paid to climate adaptation and resilience”.

Full story

Call for postgrad childcare support

Access to student Childcare Grants should be expanded to include taught and research postgraduates, a report from the Higher Education Policy Institute has argued. Both groups missed out on the Conservative government’s 2023 expansion of support, which offers workers 15 free hours a week for two-year-olds. From September this year, this will expand to babies from nine months old, rising to 30 free hours of support from September 2025. The current Childcare Grants for undergraduates are available to students whose household income is below £19,795. Limiting these to undergraduates “creates a barrier for those with childcare responsibilities who wish to undertake postgraduate studies”, the report says. “This lack of equitable provision disproportionately affects women and those from lower-income communities.” The report calls on the new Labour government to rectify the omission.

Full story

Picture of the week

Image: Number 10 [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0], via Flickr. Click here to see full-size image

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Alignment with the Nuffield Foundation’s priorities is vital for grant success

Top tips

• Ensure your research is aligned with the precepts and principles of the foundation
• Impact is vital but the foundation takes a broad and collaborative approach to assessing it
• Grants can be used for smaller projects as well as larger ones
• In both cases, showing that you have the right expertise and team to carry out the work is vital

Since its founding in 1943, the Nuffield Foundation has established itself as arguably the UK’s leading independent funder of research geared towards social policy in education, welfare and justice. 

As a funder that has long had impact as a priority, the foundation says it seeks to fund rigorous research and encourage innovation to improve people’s lives. 

The Nuffield Foundation’s central and longest-standing funding stream is the Research, Development and Analysis Fund, which is open now to outline applications, with a deadline of 14 October. It funds projects worth up to £750,000 for between six months and three years. Most grants are for sums of less than £300,000. 

The foundation also runs more specialised funding streams, including the Racial Diversity UK Fund, which focuses on the future of UK society as shaped by migration from former UK colonies. The Racial Diversity UK Fund is also open now, with a deadline of 14 October.

All Research, Development and Analysis Fund applications must be relevant to at least one of the foundation’s three core interest areas (education, welfare, justice) and also to the UK context, even if that is in a comparative way.

Competition for these grants is usually tough, with only 15 per cent of outline applicants typically invited to send full proposals. Alex Beer, head of grants operations and portfolio development at the Nuffield Foundation, suggests how applicants can raise their chances of selection to the full application stage.

Are there any recent changes to the Research, Development and Analysis Fund that applicants should be aware of?

We have just simplified our outline application form. We are asking fewer questions, fewer words are required, and we have shortened our overall application timetable. Hopefully that means it is easier and quicker to apply.  

What is your best advice to get over the threshold of the outline stage? 

To get over the line, what I would advise is reading our guide for applicants and understanding where our priorities lie. We are interested in improving social wellbeing; we are interested in the way that disadvantage, vulnerability and inequalities play out in the areas of education, welfare and justice. So, aligning the research questions with our interests is absolutely key.

How do applicants signal a bid’s relevance to those areas?  

There is a checkbox on the application form that says education, welfare or justice, but if the idea is cross-cutting, tick the box that is most relevant. Most applications are looked at by more than one person, and that will include people with interests across those areas. So, checking one box over another will not force the application into a silo.

What else is important?

We want to ensure there is that alignment with our priorities and a clear rationale for why the research question matters. Why is it relevant? Why is it needed? 

We also want a clear methodology. We are interested in a wide range of methodologies; quantitative, qualitative, mixed-methods. The main focus for us is whether the proposed methods are suitable for answering the question that is being posed. And, finally, we want to understand how the research is going to make a difference and change lives. So, we will focus on impact. 

How do you measure impact? 

We have a broad definition but what is important is the project being able to ultimately deliver policy and practice change. We accept, however, that improving understanding and changing attitudes and behaviours are vital ways in which the research that we fund might make that difference. 

We do not expect applications to aim for all of those, but to set out which dimensions of impact they might be able to make a difference with and then qualitatively how they will progress to do that.  

We do take quite a qualitative approach to assessing impact, and we are open to how we do so. From the moment someone is funded by us, there will be a regular dialogue between us and them, with our aim being to support our grant holders to deliver that project and maximise impact.  

What does the rest of the application process look like? 

For the applicants we invite for the full application stage, we will set out some questions we have for them; some things that were not clear, some challenges we might have for them. We would expect the applicant to address those in their full application. If the applicant at that stage wanted a conversation about exactly what we meant by any of the questions, we are more than happy to discuss that.

The full application gets peer-reviewed, if it meets the quality threshold. All applications are returned to the applicant with the reviews and any additional commentary from us that we would like to see addressed. The applicants then have an opportunity to respond before the final decision. 

Where are applicants usually based? 

We fund a lot of research from think tanks and from universities, but we also fund research that is led by third sector organisations—for example, domestic violence charities or children and young people-centred justice organisations.

However, most of our funding goes to researchers based at universities. The current breakdown is 160 universities, 30 research policy institutions and nine charities, but provided the team has the necessary skills and expertise, then we are relatively neutral about where they are based. 

What considerations come into play when assessing larger versus smaller applications? 

One big question is, is your expertise sufficient to deliver what you are going to do? Grant applicants should highlight the strengths that are going to enable you to deliver the project. 

I should add that although the Research, Development and Analysis Fund invites applications up to £750,000, we still welcome applications for smaller sums—say, between £20,000 or £50,000—where those sums are more appropriate. I would not put a limit on the amount depending on a researcher’s career stage because that is not the way the foundation thinks about it, but it might be that earlier career researchers are after smaller grant awards and they just need to demonstrate that their skills and experience are commensurate with what they are proposing. 

We would expect the larger grants to answer more strategic questions than those posed by smaller grants, and for there to be more institutional involvement and more people and partners involved. There would also need to be an integrated and extensive engagement strategy.

This is an extract from an article in Research Professional’s Funding Insight service. To subscribe contact sales@researchresearch.com

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Are thematic priorities worth the effort?

Teenage dress sense and universities’ strategic research priorities may appear to have very little in common. But both hold to a universal law that I’m going to call the Phil Ward Principle of Homogeneity: the more unique we try to be, the more uniform we appear to others.

UK Tribes, a cultural research project by the broadcaster Channel 4 to identify the nation’s youth subcultures, puts it well when it describes the loose grouping of ‘alternative tribes’ of modern Britain: “Tired of cookie-cutter celebs and how everyone at school looks the same, alternative tribes are driven by the need to set themselves apart from the mainstream. From candy-hued hair to sleeve tattoos and multiple piercings, they’re determined to be different—but do it together.”

Difference is difficult

Universities are equally “determined to be different”, but are loath to “do it together”. They seek to stand out from their competitors, but are often unable to do so because their thematic priorities seek to include as much of their research as possible—and are therefore generic to the point of magnolia—but also be relevant to the external funding flavours du jour. As such, they inevitably bump into and overlap with others.

Earlier this year, I did an analysis of the stated strategic research priorities of the Russell Group of research universities in the UK and former 1994 Group universities (smaller research-intensive institutions that were founded that year). Of the 38 institutions within this cluster, almost two-thirds (23) had thematic priorities. 

I believe there are four reasons for doing so, and these can be mapped onto a continuum running from being a passive ‘shop window’ at one end, to having a deliberate and directive ‘case for cash’ at the other, as illustrated in the Phil Ward Continuum of Priority Rationalisation presented here:

Most institutions present their themes as articles of faith, corresponding closely with the second and third rationales (‘emphasise beliefs’, ‘prioritise efforts’) given above. Some evidence them with metrics. For instance, at University College London, ‘mental health and wellbeing’ is top of the metric totem pole (£20m, 150 researchers, 82 projects), while ‘justice and equality’ (£200,000) and ‘transformative technology’ (30 projects) are the poor relations. It’s a bit like playing Top Trumps. 

Few of the universities are explicit about having thematic priorities in order to position themselves for winning awards. Their cause is apparently far nobler. However, the University of Bath is refreshingly honest. It might start out saying that its thematic priorities will “empower our research community to tackle major global challenges”, but then it cuts to the chase. Its priority initiative “supports a culture of grant capture for multidisciplinary collaborations that address UK Research and Innovation strategic themes”. But what will happen when our national funder decides to refresh its themes?

The number of priorities for the 23 universities ranges between three and 10, with the average being five, falling broadly into the following categories:

Health: The most popular of the themes, with 20 of the 23 institutions having a claimed strength in this area, and some having more than one. Some are relatively specific, such as ‘cancer’ at Manchester or ‘infectious diseases’ at Liverpool, but most go for something more generic, from ‘healthy society’ (Imperial) to ‘health and wellbeing’ (Bath, Nottingham and York), ‘healthy living for all’ (Queen’s University Belfast) and ‘lifelong health’ (Surrey). 

Environment: Here, universities take bites at the same issue from different angles: ‘sustainable societies’ (Imperial and Nottingham), ‘sustainable cities’ (UCL and Warwick), and ‘sustainable food’ (Sheffield). You get a sense that, if you gathered together all this fractured and atomised effort, you really could crack this.

Society: The keywords here are ‘social justice’, from ‘striving for social justice’ (Bristol) to ‘social and economic justice’ (Goldsmiths), ‘social justice, inequalities and conflict’ (Kent) and back to plain old ‘social justice’ (Leicester).

Technology: There’s a creeping unease with technology detectable here. On the one hand, we have the exciting potential of a new dawn (from the vaguely Instagram-friendly ‘future life’ at Glasgow to a ‘smart society’ at Imperial), and on the other, a palpable terror of what’s to come (‘cybersecurity’ at Warwick and ‘secure connected intelligence’ at Queen’s).

Culture: You can imagine the strategic discussions that led to the final category. “Right, we’ve got the basics sorted. Shall we throw in something artsy?” “Yes,” comes the reply, “but we’ve got to make it relevant.” So Glasgow has ‘cultural and creative industries’, Goldsmiths goes for ‘invention, creativity and experience’, UCL has ‘culture and understanding’, and both Nottingham and York offer ‘culture and communication(s)’.

By striving to be unique, the universities demonstrate that they are anything but. The reasons are understandable, but do negate the value that a priority can offer. It’s rare and refreshing when a university offers up something unusual (I’m looking at you, Leicester, with your Asimovian ‘space power and AI’), but it’s risky: they will be waiting for some time before a major funder offers up a call in the area. When it does so, however, the payoff will be immense. While the others scrabble forth from their ‘health and wellbeing’ resting position, the space scientists of Leicester will be coining it in. The candy-hued hair and sleeve tattoos will have been worth it after all.

Phil Ward is director of the Eastern Arc regional research consortium, UK

This is an extract from an article in Research Professional’s Funding Insight service. To subscribe contact sales@researchresearch.com

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