Serious concerns over UK research funding.
This is what comes of putting a business management emphasis in place in Higher Education and sticking Universities under the government department & Secretary for Business. Or rather the latter was a result of the former style of thinking. Academia is now only 'worthwhile' when it can in advance be seen to serve the economy. This is based on (at least) 2 fallacies:
Economic experts who have specialised in this area have as much problem with this as I do: see comments here by Jonathan Adams, director of research evaluation for Thomson Reuters, which has invested 20 years looking into this.
"The problem is that it is very complex, but the government wants a very simple indicator. Research takes a long time to translate into new products and processes, so the lag between investment and change is extended, variable and uncertain. It is pie-in-the-sky to think that an administrator in Bristol [Hefce's headquarters] is going to come up with something that economic consultants have been chasing for decades."
Much important fundamental research takes decades to filter through to any scientific or social, let alone economic effect, but a diminuation in support for such research would have a very rapid effect on the UK's competitiveness in Higher Education markets and on our ability to attract top flight researchers to our universities. Current plans in the proposal look at 10-15 years of impact, not 30 to 50.
Just as measuring the significance of a work by citations follows an odd curve*, universities impact cannot be measured on the yearly or five-year basis common in consumer and other businesses. In this context, Mandelson's recent comments, clearly gauged to be understood by the Business audience of his portfolio, seem particularly unhelpful. I'd rather hear students referred to as learners rather than consumers, particularly as judgements of the quality of the experience (other than clear failures to provide appropriate lectures and teaching etc) and impact on your life are best made on reflection a few years after leaving university, rather than at the time. Students are buying the cumulative effect the University experience will have on their understanding of the subject studied, their mind and career, and a lot of that is what they'll put in and the quality of teaching, not the standardised number of hours in lectures.
Business and academic worlds have a fundamental conflict of values which means that applying business thinking can make the latter less effective at what it does. Seeing Universities as part of the skills-production machinery feeding the (non-HE) business sector is a predictable effect of grouping them together as a government department.
The failure to link or refer to connections between research and teaching commitments, tends to further separation and tension of the linked streams of academic activity and inevitably creates further obstacles to researchers transferring off-the-page experience and expertise to learners. So likely to hinder future national research strength.
For those universities without significant endowments (believe me a problem for the Russell group as for other UK universities) there are concerns about maintaining academic independence in a context of more reliance on donations and business funding. US universities have had a number of related controversies, particularly in pharmaceuticals. I still can't work out what Mandelson means by, "a more professional approach to endowments."
Media coverage hasn't been consistently conscious of the effect on fundamental academic activities, leading with headlines such as,'No more David Beckham studies as universities end 'irrelevant' research', plus examples, and 'Pointless' university studies to be weeded out by new government panel'
Further context
Guardian University Funding section
Times Higher Education
Times Education section
Independent Higher Education section
HEFCE
DIUS
DIUS - 'experimental space for BIS to improve policymaking and collaboration with social media.'
JISC DIUS Higher Education Debate
[Later edit: Universities and Whitehall, New Statesman article by Vernon Bogdanor, Professor of Government at the University of Oxford
... Neither Isaiah Berlin - most of whose publications are in the form of scattered essays unsuitable for peer-reviewed journals - nor H L A Hart - the founder of the modern study of jurisprudence who did not produce his great work, The Concept of Law, until he was 54 - would be likely to get research grants today. Indeed, they probably would not gain tenure at a major university, because they would not be publishing enough in the right journals.
...Governments are coming to treat the universities as if they are nationalised industries, telling them how many students they can take and what they are allowed to charge them... the universities, if they are to fulfil their function, must remain self-governing bodies. They cannot become part of the managed public sector in the way that the NHS, for example, is. The independence of the universities is a vital bulwark of academic freedom, the freedom to produce ideas.]
From the Times article:
'Hundreds of eminent scientists including Professor Richard Dawkins and six Nobel prizewinners are campaigning against plans to put an end to university research that is deemed worthless.
Research will be rated and funded according to its potential economic impact in a shake-up of university finance that the scientists say will wipe out accidental discoveries....
“The REF proposals are founded on a lack of understanding of how knowledge advances. It is often difficult to predict which research will create the greatest practical impact,” they say.
“If implemented, these proposals risk undermining support for basic research across all disciplines and may well lead to an academic brain drain to countries such as the United States that continue to value fundamental research.”...
The spirit of adventure and academic freedom allow scientists to push back boundaries of knowledge, the statement says....
Sally Hunt, general secretary of the University and College Union, said: “History has taught us that some of the biggest breakthroughs have come from curiosity-driven research. The new proposals are not supported by UK academics, nor are they in operation anywhere else in the world.
“Untested and unwanted, they will damage our international reputation.”...
The panel of 14 looking at the plans, put forward by the Higher Education Funding Council for England, has only three academics. Critics said the proposals were without precedent and should not be brought in without a proper trial.'
HEFCE is doing a pilot until next summer involving 26 universities, showing how impact can be measured through case studies, but this isn't going to change implementation and the relevant time frames are still going to make that a gesture rather than effective basis for assessment.
Of course, UK funding in the HE sector isn't assisted by overseas student loan defaulters in conjunction with lowering the drawbridge for higher-paying non-EU students. The defaulters article has errors, such as making it appear that the tuition fees haven't been paid, rather than the loans and I hate to side with the Mail on anything but reader comments about effective tracking methods, or home nation enforcement, being conditional before loans are issued seem sensible, as the loans system has enough problems. Costs to students are already making overseas studies more attractive to UK residents. If we lose competitiveness in the domestic market, its hard to see our maintaining success with the overseas students who bring bright minds and needed fees into our system, honing its global edge. Higher education and research are already global markets and we can't walk away from that as, so far, Britain is gaining more from that than most.
Universities are elite institutions, or institutions aspiring to be elite, or they aren't fulfilling their function as Universities. Current civil service/government thinking doesn't seem to be clear about this. Widening access should mean widening high quality learning, not pressuring successful institutions to fit the current mean but raising all to raise the mean towards the upper percentile. This does require very high investment levels - much higher than the historical levels as elite universities of the past maintained quality by catering to those who had the best preparation to enter and grow their talents or the best ability to pay (unequitable though that system was).
It isn't clear that the money to fund wider quality university on the scale the government wishes is out there for the getting, but it definitely won't be if the standards of UK universities are seen (by the donors and businesses they wish to fund us, and international students and academics we need to attract) as eroded or undermined by government requirements or restrictions. No one wants to waste an investment, whether made for themselves or for other's benefit, by having its effect devalued by government re-engineering of the institution or project they thought they were supporting.
Not all comments from the top are entirely problematic but the current trends for, effectively, a short-termist badly-applied economics drive to standardised mediocrity benefits no-one. How it is avoided is another question, but dropping the idea of tying research funding to highly speculative theories of potential economic benefits would be a start.
*Dead-end or bad research can generate a lot of citations in the first few years as it is referred to to refute it. Conversely, pivotal research can take a decade to start generate high-volumes of citations as other researchers start publishing their work bases on it's ideas, then eventually it becomes such embedded science that the original work is no longer cited, just the most recent generations of papers following the threads it started. Research in very niche areas which doesn't generate further research along the lines it explores (sometimes because it is completing a series of investigations spanning generations - tidying up the ends) will generate some references in the first few years but these are likely to peter out to a minimal level over time.
Sadly I can't find the article I read recently reporting that, though returns are lower for Humanities and Social Sciences than Medical and Hard Sciences, for every £6 investment Humanities generates around £9 back for the British economy. I'd like to recheck this and the report the article was quoting. Any help with that would be great (I thought I'd saved or posted it, but apparently not).
Later edit Petition at uk.gov for pure research priorities to continue to apply - http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/REFandimpact/
- the idea that the economic worth of research can be meaningfully assessed before the research is done and
- a failure to recognise the economic worth of all intellectual and academic activity, (not least the contribution the Higher Education market and UK's high international standing makes regardless of particular research outcomes).
Economic experts who have specialised in this area have as much problem with this as I do: see comments here by Jonathan Adams, director of research evaluation for Thomson Reuters, which has invested 20 years looking into this.
"The problem is that it is very complex, but the government wants a very simple indicator. Research takes a long time to translate into new products and processes, so the lag between investment and change is extended, variable and uncertain. It is pie-in-the-sky to think that an administrator in Bristol [Hefce's headquarters] is going to come up with something that economic consultants have been chasing for decades."
Much important fundamental research takes decades to filter through to any scientific or social, let alone economic effect, but a diminuation in support for such research would have a very rapid effect on the UK's competitiveness in Higher Education markets and on our ability to attract top flight researchers to our universities. Current plans in the proposal look at 10-15 years of impact, not 30 to 50.
Just as measuring the significance of a work by citations follows an odd curve*, universities impact cannot be measured on the yearly or five-year basis common in consumer and other businesses. In this context, Mandelson's recent comments, clearly gauged to be understood by the Business audience of his portfolio, seem particularly unhelpful. I'd rather hear students referred to as learners rather than consumers, particularly as judgements of the quality of the experience (other than clear failures to provide appropriate lectures and teaching etc) and impact on your life are best made on reflection a few years after leaving university, rather than at the time. Students are buying the cumulative effect the University experience will have on their understanding of the subject studied, their mind and career, and a lot of that is what they'll put in and the quality of teaching, not the standardised number of hours in lectures.
Business and academic worlds have a fundamental conflict of values which means that applying business thinking can make the latter less effective at what it does. Seeing Universities as part of the skills-production machinery feeding the (non-HE) business sector is a predictable effect of grouping them together as a government department.
The failure to link or refer to connections between research and teaching commitments, tends to further separation and tension of the linked streams of academic activity and inevitably creates further obstacles to researchers transferring off-the-page experience and expertise to learners. So likely to hinder future national research strength.
For those universities without significant endowments (believe me a problem for the Russell group as for other UK universities) there are concerns about maintaining academic independence in a context of more reliance on donations and business funding. US universities have had a number of related controversies, particularly in pharmaceuticals. I still can't work out what Mandelson means by, "a more professional approach to endowments."
Media coverage hasn't been consistently conscious of the effect on fundamental academic activities, leading with headlines such as,'No more David Beckham studies as universities end 'irrelevant' research', plus examples, and 'Pointless' university studies to be weeded out by new government panel'
Further context
- Leading article: The business of higher education
- University Finance, the debate that isn't
- Mandelson orders university funding review
Guardian University Funding section
Times Higher Education
Times Education section
Independent Higher Education section
HEFCE
DIUS
DIUS - 'experimental space for BIS to improve policymaking and collaboration with social media.'
JISC DIUS Higher Education Debate
[Later edit: Universities and Whitehall, New Statesman article by Vernon Bogdanor, Professor of Government at the University of Oxford
... Neither Isaiah Berlin - most of whose publications are in the form of scattered essays unsuitable for peer-reviewed journals - nor H L A Hart - the founder of the modern study of jurisprudence who did not produce his great work, The Concept of Law, until he was 54 - would be likely to get research grants today. Indeed, they probably would not gain tenure at a major university, because they would not be publishing enough in the right journals.
...Governments are coming to treat the universities as if they are nationalised industries, telling them how many students they can take and what they are allowed to charge them... the universities, if they are to fulfil their function, must remain self-governing bodies. They cannot become part of the managed public sector in the way that the NHS, for example, is. The independence of the universities is a vital bulwark of academic freedom, the freedom to produce ideas.]
From the Times article:
'Hundreds of eminent scientists including Professor Richard Dawkins and six Nobel prizewinners are campaigning against plans to put an end to university research that is deemed worthless.
Research will be rated and funded according to its potential economic impact in a shake-up of university finance that the scientists say will wipe out accidental discoveries....
“The REF proposals are founded on a lack of understanding of how knowledge advances. It is often difficult to predict which research will create the greatest practical impact,” they say.
“If implemented, these proposals risk undermining support for basic research across all disciplines and may well lead to an academic brain drain to countries such as the United States that continue to value fundamental research.”...
The spirit of adventure and academic freedom allow scientists to push back boundaries of knowledge, the statement says....
Sally Hunt, general secretary of the University and College Union, said: “History has taught us that some of the biggest breakthroughs have come from curiosity-driven research. The new proposals are not supported by UK academics, nor are they in operation anywhere else in the world.
“Untested and unwanted, they will damage our international reputation.”...
The panel of 14 looking at the plans, put forward by the Higher Education Funding Council for England, has only three academics. Critics said the proposals were without precedent and should not be brought in without a proper trial.'
HEFCE is doing a pilot until next summer involving 26 universities, showing how impact can be measured through case studies, but this isn't going to change implementation and the relevant time frames are still going to make that a gesture rather than effective basis for assessment.
Of course, UK funding in the HE sector isn't assisted by overseas student loan defaulters in conjunction with lowering the drawbridge for higher-paying non-EU students. The defaulters article has errors, such as making it appear that the tuition fees haven't been paid, rather than the loans and I hate to side with the Mail on anything but reader comments about effective tracking methods, or home nation enforcement, being conditional before loans are issued seem sensible, as the loans system has enough problems. Costs to students are already making overseas studies more attractive to UK residents. If we lose competitiveness in the domestic market, its hard to see our maintaining success with the overseas students who bring bright minds and needed fees into our system, honing its global edge. Higher education and research are already global markets and we can't walk away from that as, so far, Britain is gaining more from that than most.
Universities are elite institutions, or institutions aspiring to be elite, or they aren't fulfilling their function as Universities. Current civil service/government thinking doesn't seem to be clear about this. Widening access should mean widening high quality learning, not pressuring successful institutions to fit the current mean but raising all to raise the mean towards the upper percentile. This does require very high investment levels - much higher than the historical levels as elite universities of the past maintained quality by catering to those who had the best preparation to enter and grow their talents or the best ability to pay (unequitable though that system was).
It isn't clear that the money to fund wider quality university on the scale the government wishes is out there for the getting, but it definitely won't be if the standards of UK universities are seen (by the donors and businesses they wish to fund us, and international students and academics we need to attract) as eroded or undermined by government requirements or restrictions. No one wants to waste an investment, whether made for themselves or for other's benefit, by having its effect devalued by government re-engineering of the institution or project they thought they were supporting.
Not all comments from the top are entirely problematic but the current trends for, effectively, a short-termist badly-applied economics drive to standardised mediocrity benefits no-one. How it is avoided is another question, but dropping the idea of tying research funding to highly speculative theories of potential economic benefits would be a start.
*Dead-end or bad research can generate a lot of citations in the first few years as it is referred to to refute it. Conversely, pivotal research can take a decade to start generate high-volumes of citations as other researchers start publishing their work bases on it's ideas, then eventually it becomes such embedded science that the original work is no longer cited, just the most recent generations of papers following the threads it started. Research in very niche areas which doesn't generate further research along the lines it explores (sometimes because it is completing a series of investigations spanning generations - tidying up the ends) will generate some references in the first few years but these are likely to peter out to a minimal level over time.
Sadly I can't find the article I read recently reporting that, though returns are lower for Humanities and Social Sciences than Medical and Hard Sciences, for every £6 investment Humanities generates around £9 back for the British economy. I'd like to recheck this and the report the article was quoting. Any help with that would be great (I thought I'd saved or posted it, but apparently not).
Later edit Petition at uk.gov for pure research priorities to continue to apply - http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/REFandimpact/