Schizophrenia and the Funding of Regional Universities

Hull: one of 'Wave 2 Growth Hubs'

In February the Government announced that it was offering £32m to 20 regional cities in the UK to support economic growth and development. The cities, which included areas as diverse as Milton Keynes, Hull, Stoke and Sunderland, were offered the funding in return for a promise to 'improve a serious local economic problem'.

Concentration: the Agenda that Won't Go Away

I responded here to rumblings from Phil Willis on the need to concentrate research funding on the favoured few. Prof Dominic Abrams did likewise here. He highlighted the inherent contradiction in the messages coming from government. When it comes to investing in commercial organisations, the government emphsises 'the value and role of small businesses and enterprises as the basis for growth.It is argued that there should be fewer barriers and thresholds for these businesses to compete for contracts, for work and to develop - quite the reverse of concentration'. Likewise, in the finance sector, 'most stockbrokers like to spread their investments in terms of size and risk, because, over the long term, this is the most profitable strategy.'

So why is it so different for research funding? 'Critical mass' is the usual justification used by advocates of concentration. We need to be big in order to compete globally. We need to be pool our resources, and not salami slice the limited budget. But this, I would argue, is bad for risk taking, creativity, and innovation. The system is already skewed towards safe, empire-sustaining research (incidentally, it's worth having a look at Tim Harford's piece on Mario Capecchi in relation to this); what we need is more funding (including small-scale funding) for risk-taking pilot projects, wherever they originate.

Which is why it was so refreshing to read Professor Les Ebdon's counterblast to concentration in the Guardian yesterday. His article marked the publication of Research that Matters (pdf) by the thinktank Million+. This highlights the fact that modern (or post-92) universities get relatively little central research funding, but manage to leverage a great deal of activity and investment from this. Why should more be taken from them? Wouldn't it be better to invest more, rather than less, in pockets of excellence, wherever they're found, rather than continuing to subsidise the large, inefficient, risk-averse behemoths?

Prof Ebdon finishes his piece by pointing to notable - and perhaps surprising - successes, including research to tackle disease in sub-Saharan Africa that was undertaken at the University of Greenwich, and has been voted one of the 10 most important discoveries to be made in a UK university in the last 60 years.

I'm sure the 'concentration' juggernaut will continue to rumble on, but we shouldn't accept it as a done deal. The more that people question it, and highlight its failings, the better for the long term health of UK research.

Phil Willis: Concentrate Research

The former Chair of the Commons Science and Technology Committee, Phil Willis, has been sounding off in the Times Higher about the future of research in the UK, suggesting that the country needs a "real gloves-off rationalisation of university research".

Echoing the implied (or, in some cases, explicit) call for concentration in the Research Council's Delivery Plans, he suggested that research should be focused in 'no more than 30' universities. The rest should retire gracefully from research, and become US-style liberal teaching only community colleges.

Whilst Willis does not weild as much power and influence as he did as an MP, these are still worrying thoughts. The RAE2008 made positive strides in identifying and rewarding excellent research, wherever it was found. Why penalise pockets of excellence in (let's be frank) non-Russell Group institutions? In some areas of hard science, there may be a case to be made for economies of scale and the sharing of large - and expensive - equipment and infrastructure. But in the social sciences and humanities? Hmm.

Moreover, the concensus is that excellent research informs and drives excellent teaching. Separating the two creates a two tier system, consigning the majority of students to second class teaching, removed from the cutting edge of research, and the elite minority to the ivory towers of excellence.

Separating the two is, I think, a retrograde step. For students at institutions like Kent, on the cusp of that 'no more than 30', as well as all those further down the league tables, there are uncertain times ahead.