Summary
The UK’s universities are internationally recognised as some of the best institutions in the world in which to conduct scientific research. Traditionally, the dual-funding system has supported the research community well, but a stagnation in Quality Related funding (QR funding) since 2010 has led to a deficit in funding which universities have had to plug through cross-subsidies. This has occurred alongside a decrease in the percentage of research costs universities are able to recover from funders including research councils and charities. We recommend that the Government addresses this deficit and commits to increasing QR funding each year by at least the rate of inflation.
It is in the context of a research system which is currently having to cross-subsidise from other areas of funding in the higher education ecosystem, for example from international student fees, that we examined the recommendations of the Augar Review. We found that the Augar Review did not did not take a holistic approach to the funding of universities and made no attempt to assess the potential impact of its recommended reductions in student fees on the funding of research.
We remain sceptical about the impact of many of the proposals made by the Augar Review on research funding in universities. We recommend that if the Government is to follow any of the recommendations of the review relating to tuition fees, it must implement them as a full financial package, including increasing the teaching grant to cover the loss of tuition fees, to ensure that universities are no worse off than they are now.
The Augar Review included proposals which we considered would erode the autonomy of universities, such as the proposal that the Office for Students should determine the value of teaching grant awarded to individual institutions for different subjects. We are concerned that the Office for Students would decide the relative value of different subjects. Given the complex nature of the cross-subsidies universities use to manage their finances, seemingly small disruptions to inputs could have significant unintended consequences for research. We do not believe that the Office for Students is the right body to make these decisions.
We considered the effects of Brexit on science research funding in universities. It was clear that the Government should commit to associating the UK with Horizon Europe as soon as possible to provide researchers with certainty and that it must ensure that UK universities continue to receive the same amount of funding they currently receive from the EU. In doing so, the Government must award funding on the basis of research excellence and should consider carefully the ratio of funding between discovery research and applied research.
The UK will not reach its target of investing 2.4% of GDP in research and development by 2027 unless funding for research in universities is secured and the UK can attract researchers from overseas. We recommend that the Government ensures that its post-Brexit immigration laws do not hinder the ability of UK universities to recruit and retain researchers. As well as this, remaining committed to international research collaborations following Brexit will enable the UK to continue to attract the best talent from around the world.