Funding teaching or funding research? Implications of the new fee regime

Universities unable to charge above £6,000 will, as a consequence of the reduction in public spending (through HEFCE block grant), experience a significant cut in the money previously available to support teaching, while their students will pay more for less. It is this that leads the Higher Education Policy Institute to think that most universities will seek to charge the higher fees and that it is in the interest of students that they should do so. According to HEPI, under the proposed loan arrangements the extra cost of the higher fee for ‘low earners’ is less than £300.  For this they would benefit from significantly greater investment in their courses. The National Union of Students, however, is committed to campaign for the lower fee to be standard.

Competition or partnership: could private providers solve UK higher education's supply and demand problem?

December's tuition-fee legislation is a turning point in UK higher education, but it has diverted attention from the coalition government’s intention to encourage private providers to to generate competition for state-run HE. Should the ‘traditional’ university sector fear the private providers or, as Paul Marshall suggests here, embrace the opportunities they offer?

Women of science, do you know your place?

Why there are so few women in science? Or to be more precise, why are there so few women in the physical sciences, and so few at the top of any field?

LWEC's future lies in partnerships

To many observers, cross-research council funding programmes were particularly vulnerable to government cuts. So how did they do? Andrew Watkinson of the cross-council funded Living With Environmental Change programme says growing pressure on funding makes partnership working increasingly important for LWEC and others. 

Understanding Engagement

Earlier this week a conference on Science and Citizenship took place in London, organized by the Wellcome Trust, the British Council, SciDev.Net, the Commonwealth Association and the British Science Association.

Research Fortnight's editorial suggested the conference would assess the legacy of the 1985 Bodmer report into the Public Understanding of Science (pdf). The British Council's homepage for the event promised debate over whether we had achieved a democratic model of science communication? In the end, the event seemed more like a tenth birthday party for the 2000 Lords Science and Society report.

In fact, I left the conference thinking there was very little discussion of citizenship at all. Maybe I choose the wrong workshop sessions, but people seemed most keen to talk about Geek Pop, Fame Lab and SciCast: fun with science for those who generally already find it fun, rather than anything more overtly political (not that having fun with science isn't political, or that such projects cannot be seen as a step in increased democratic engagement with science). It seemed to be largely about popular science, with some of the language of democratic involvement stuck on for decoration.

Top government science and research post axed in civil service reshuffle

The government is to abolish the position of Director General of Science and Research at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, Research Fortnight has learnt.

The DGSR post, which pays a salary of around £165,000, is to disappear as part of a wider shake-up at the top of BIS. In a letter to staff, Permanent Secretary Martin Donnelly confirmed the department will be organised under just three policy groups from the next financial year. Science, research, universities and space will now sit inside a new group called Knowledge and Innovation.

“This [Knowledge and Innovation] grouping spans elements of three of the existing groups, so it has not proved possible to do a match for this post,” Donnelly wrote in the letter. “Having consulted the Cabinet Office I have concluded there should therefore be a competition to fill the new post.”

The new post has been advertised internally and interviews are being held this week—suggesting that a career civil servant is being sought. It is not clear whether the current DGSR Adrian Smith, former principal of Queen Mary, University of London, intends to apply. Smith has been the DGSR since September 2008.
During a hearing of the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee on 16 November, chief scientific adviser John Beddington revealed that he had not been consulted on the decision—a situation which he described as “deeply regrettable”.

The papers on Browne

All of the major newspapers have responded to the Browne review of university finance on their editorial pages today. Most were generally in favour of Browne’s plans—with the notable exception of The Daily Mail. Here’s a round-up of what they said:

The Guardian

The lefty paper accepts the necessity of higher fees, and appreciates Browne’s attempt to protect poorer students.

“The Liberal Democrats, who were in denial about higher education's financial problems at the election, have been forced to make a rapid U-turn to an uncomfortable reality.”

Beware political compromises on Browne

John Browne’s panel has come up with an insightful and shrewd report. It builds on the political settlement that introduced graduate-payment tuition fees in 2006. It was to be expected that Browne would recommend that those fees should rise, and he has come up with some well crafted safeguards against higher fees being a deterrent to students from less well off backgrounds, and to protect against universities over-charging.

In a different political and economic climate, this approach could have paved the way to a wholly new approach to the funding of the UK’s universities, sweeping aside the existing tight government control over student numbers and fees and setting universities free at last to compete globally.

New REF timeline

HEFCE has announced the new time frame for the Research Excellence Framework, after science minister David Willetts confirmed last week that it would be delayed for a year to give HEFCE and academics more time to design an acceptable way to measure the social and economic impact of research.

Here is the revised REF timetable:

July 2010 – Announce panel structure and start recruitment of expert panels
September 2010 – Deadline for applications for sub panel chairs
October 2010 – Deadline for nominating panel members
November 2010 – Impact pilot exercise report and events
December 2010 – Panel recruitment completed
Early 2011 – Panels begin meeting
Mid 2011 – Panels consult on criteria
Mid 2011 – Guidance on submissions published
Late 2011 – Panel criteria and methods published
Early 2013 – Submission system operational
Late 2013 – Submissions deadline
2014 – Assessment phase
December 2014 – Outcomes published
2015 – Outcomes will be used for research funding allocations

Thoughts on David Willetts' speech at the RI

There were a couple of interesting things to come out of science minister David Willetts' speech at the Royal Institution today. He confirmed that the Research Excellence Framework would be delayed for a year while Hefce sorts out how to measure impact in a way that wont cause a mass revolt in the universities. But we already knew that was coming. More interesting were his comments on the concentration of research funding, and the economic arguements for government investment in science.

Let's take concentration first. In the speech, Willetts said he was in favour of concentrating funding on excellent research. But (sorry Russell Group) he said "excellence is to be found in individual departments". At a press briefing before the speech, he went even further, saying concentration was "not a matter for entire universities". So it would seem Willetts is backing the 'islands of excellence' funding model preferred by the smaller and newer universities, rather than the suggestion, put forward by the Russell Group's chairman and Leeds VC Michael Arthur, that the government should just give all of its research cash to 30 or so big players.