Strong Reaction from the Sector to the Cable Gaffe

There's been a strong reaction to Vince Cable's gaffe on the Today programme on Wednesday, when he suggested that 'something like 45% of the research grants that were going through were to research that was not of excellent standard so we are going to have to set the bar higher.' Twitter's been abuzz, and there's been the inevitable facebook groups set up - eg 'Vince Cable's Wrong on Science'.

Dr Evan Harris, writing in the Guardian, summaries the controversy quite clearly, quoting James Wilsdon of the Royal Society who explains why Cable got it so wrong:

'In the last Research Assessment Exercise, 54% of the work that was submitted for assessment was classed as 3* or 4*, which means it is, by definition, world class. This research receives £980m from Hefce. Research that is 2* (which Hefce still regards as 'internationally recognised') gets £115 million and 1* research gets nothing. So Hefce allocates the vast majority – nearly 90% – of its funding to world class research.'

Elsewhere others are exasperated at Cable's call for UK science to be more efficient and 'do more with less.' '1% of the world’s pop. but contributes 8% of its sci papers, and 12% of journal citations,' quotes one tweet, which speaks for itself, whilst Chris Tyler says 'just read Cable's speech. So spending more on science would be good for UK AND we will see science budget cuts.'

Finally, to finish up the round of rumours, there's talk of how large the cuts will be. The current rumour is that 'BIS may settle with Treasury next week -10% plus inflation is best case but -15/-20% more likely.'

We'll wait and see.

Cable Softens the Sector for Cuts

In an unsurprising move, Vince Cable has been softening up the sector today for cuts to the Science budget in the forthcoming spending review. In a speech at Queen Mary's, he will repeat his 'do more with less' mantra, saying that 'we need a wide spectrum of research activity,' but that we need 'a process of selection and choice' rather than 'shav[ing] a bit off everything'

But how should this be done? 'My preference is to ration research funding by excellence and back research teams of international quality - and screen out mediocrity – regardless of where they are and what they do.'

Despite the underlying current of cuts, this is in some ways good news. Cable seems to be going with Hefce's policy at the last RAE - that the Government funds excellent research wherever it's found - rather than concentrating on a clutch of a few, predominantly Russell Group universities, which was the suggestion earlier in the year.

Beyond that, it's all a bit ill-defined. Worryingly, although he says that he supports blue skies research, it's only if it's 'commercially useful [or] theoretically outstanding.' He goes on to wax lyrical about 'transforming research into innovation', 'spin out companies' and 'overseas investors.'

So the message is inevitably a curate's egg in these choppy economic times. We'll back quality research, he's saying, but we're going to expect you to do more with it.

Cable: 'Do More with Less'

Vince Cable, the Government's Business Secretary, has written to universities to say that 'Starting now and in the years ahead we are all going to have to do more with less and stop doing some of the things we currently do.' The letter comes after the announcement of a further £200m cut in the higher education budget, and warns of further dark skies ahead: 'The drive to control public finances will remain with us and there will be a need within the next Spending Review, to look again at options for further savings.'