The researchers are on the march
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/8415017.stm
While bonus points for medium-term impact for research which is not of world-leading or nationally-leading status seems a fine idea, the terms in which HEFCE made its proposal appear to mean that a medium-term impact outside academia will be a key component of attracting funding for any research.
This has understandably concerned those in academia and research, who are also facing swingeing cuts over the next few years due to the towering burden of public debt incurred on behalf of the banking sector.
As I've mentioned before (at length), much significant research is often untied to immediate, or any, public or business impact. However it can have massive impact on society, culture and living decades later (once follow-on research picks up on its innovations). The nature of the global research community means that research acting on an idea is often carried out in stages (not necessarily linear) by a number of institutions across the world, rather than chased along a single line by the originators. Picking the intellectual expertise of the country and the globe allows a wider pool of approaches, ideas, and funding to be brought to bear on problems and come up with applications, if any. Important research can be blue-skies, take years or decades for the initial breakthrough and reach the public via numerous multi-institutional follow-on stages, refined over decades. Examples from Darwin's 'Origin of the Species' to the launch of home computers litter discussions of the measurability and time frames of research outcomes and inadvisability of the current proposal. Just because business cycles fit a five year pattern, doesn't mean all human efforts do.
While I'd realised that the five year time frame in the HEFCE proposal was too limited, the knock-on effects of the funding structure would possibly be even more destructive. Impact measured as relating to a particular institution would encourage more rigid institutional ownership of ideas and their development (plus increased rows over origination), obstructing the workings of the UK research community and hampering its institutions global engagement.
The educational activities of universities produce (one hopes) well informed, questioning minds for roles in other fields, and public funding recognises that this is in itself good for the national interest, and isn't just left for the industries which in particular to fund according to their narrow interest. Independent pure and applied research generates ideas and technologies which drive and are taken up by industries, businesses and governments, but the gradual and immeasureable impacts of healthy pursuit of academic rigour and intellectual excellence nurture successful societies in many ways, and it is in the public interest for these to be supported. Research bringing particular benefits to industry can be (and is) funded by those industries (in-house or university collaborations)- its part of the basic costs. Public funding of university research isn't targeted as a subsidy to the industrial and business sector, and shouldn't be repurposed in this way by stealth.
Intriguingly, all reporting of this research funding issue is located in the education sections of news media. Academia goes beyond churning out graduates and PHds for the civil service and business management fast-tracking, in fact you could regard a the teaching aspects as an in-house training ground identifying people capable of going into the business end of the research, and the wider benefits as welcome by-products (though that's obviously a deliberately blinkered and simplistic view).
In between funding squeezes, ever expanded or additional government generated targets for their activities, and libel law interfering with public critical discourse academics and academic thinkers are feeling rather beleaguered at the moment.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/6819052/A-thoughtless-approach-to-research-funding.html
While bonus points for medium-term impact for research which is not of world-leading or nationally-leading status seems a fine idea, the terms in which HEFCE made its proposal appear to mean that a medium-term impact outside academia will be a key component of attracting funding for any research.
This has understandably concerned those in academia and research, who are also facing swingeing cuts over the next few years due to the towering burden of public debt incurred on behalf of the banking sector.
As I've mentioned before (at length), much significant research is often untied to immediate, or any, public or business impact. However it can have massive impact on society, culture and living decades later (once follow-on research picks up on its innovations). The nature of the global research community means that research acting on an idea is often carried out in stages (not necessarily linear) by a number of institutions across the world, rather than chased along a single line by the originators. Picking the intellectual expertise of the country and the globe allows a wider pool of approaches, ideas, and funding to be brought to bear on problems and come up with applications, if any. Important research can be blue-skies, take years or decades for the initial breakthrough and reach the public via numerous multi-institutional follow-on stages, refined over decades. Examples from Darwin's 'Origin of the Species' to the launch of home computers litter discussions of the measurability and time frames of research outcomes and inadvisability of the current proposal. Just because business cycles fit a five year pattern, doesn't mean all human efforts do.
While I'd realised that the five year time frame in the HEFCE proposal was too limited, the knock-on effects of the funding structure would possibly be even more destructive. Impact measured as relating to a particular institution would encourage more rigid institutional ownership of ideas and their development (plus increased rows over origination), obstructing the workings of the UK research community and hampering its institutions global engagement.
The educational activities of universities produce (one hopes) well informed, questioning minds for roles in other fields, and public funding recognises that this is in itself good for the national interest, and isn't just left for the industries which in particular to fund according to their narrow interest. Independent pure and applied research generates ideas and technologies which drive and are taken up by industries, businesses and governments, but the gradual and immeasureable impacts of healthy pursuit of academic rigour and intellectual excellence nurture successful societies in many ways, and it is in the public interest for these to be supported. Research bringing particular benefits to industry can be (and is) funded by those industries (in-house or university collaborations)- its part of the basic costs. Public funding of university research isn't targeted as a subsidy to the industrial and business sector, and shouldn't be repurposed in this way by stealth.
Intriguingly, all reporting of this research funding issue is located in the education sections of news media. Academia goes beyond churning out graduates and PHds for the civil service and business management fast-tracking, in fact you could regard a the teaching aspects as an in-house training ground identifying people capable of going into the business end of the research, and the wider benefits as welcome by-products (though that's obviously a deliberately blinkered and simplistic view).
In between funding squeezes, ever expanded or additional government generated targets for their activities, and libel law interfering with public critical discourse academics and academic thinkers are feeling rather beleaguered at the moment.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/6819052/A-thoughtless-approach-to-research-funding.html