HE Making the News

My sector has made the news a couple of times in the last few days: firstly as the discussions over its future funding continues and secondly as the assessment of research has been postponed. 

Since joint the coalition, Dr. Cable has been given some of the trickier jobs to do and moving away from his party's aims to scrap tuition fees to one where he is looking at the options for a graduate tax must be tough.  It seems so different from the Lib Dems that the students voted for.  It seems so far from the Lib Dems I profiled in the lead up to the general election.  But, once again, the focus of the funding discussions looks at undergraduate students, particularly those aged 18.  They form but a part of what we do.  A significant part but it misses out on all the postgraduate, doctoral, research and knowledge transfer activities that take place.  These may form a smaller part of a university's income but in many ways are more significant to do with the culture of learning.  A recession hits postgraduate study hard as it can be easily cut and the amount of spare money for research is going to be halved.  So, whilst it is important that we look at the life-changing opportunities we offer those on Bachelor degrees, we must not forget the wider activities of a university which still need income to survive. 

But it is not just on financial numbers alone that we survive.  The assessment and ranking of our research is important.  So the good news is that the timeline for the submission to REF (the Research Excellence Framework) has been pushed back to the end of 2013 which means I may (just) be able to submit in my own right.  This means that there will be a longer period over which work can have been prepared and I think this is going to be important to give us the time to get our house in order (both personally and professionally).  Though a delay is good, more is going to be expected at the end of it so it could be a double-edged sword.