Maddalaine Ansell argues that the UK needs to look after its international alumni

International students bring new ideas and knowledge to UK campuses, broaden the university experience for domestic students, help to sustain and enrich UK universities and have a positive impact on local communities and economies. Most importantly, when they graduate from students to alumni, they take their trust in the UK—and a sense of being connected to it—back to their own countries.

But all relationships require effort, and it is not enough to presume that a good experience of the UK will generate warm feelings towards it—or to see alumni primarily as a source of philanthropy. The UK has recognised that it needs to look after its alumni in a more systematic way.

In the 2021 update to its International Education Strategy, the government announced that the British Council would be exploring options for attracting and supporting a global UK alumni network.

Last year, we at the British Council launched Alumni UK—a global network for people from around the world who have studied in the UK as an overseas student. Over 15,000 people have now enrolled and our target is to get to 150,000 by 2025. Next month, we will hold Alumni UK Live, an online festival giving graduates who have studied in the UK access to professional development opportunities and the chance to connect to other international alumni.

The aim is to offer alumni a worldwide professional network through which they can continue learning, develop employability skills, make connections and share their experience and expertise, as well as to keep UK alumni connected to the UK—recognising that they are of incalculable value.

Basis of trust

The British Council’s 2018 report The Value of Trust summarised the many studies that had looked at why trust is the bedrock of all strong relationships, how it is earned and why it matters. It concluded that trust is what allows us to believe in the reliability of others and brings the possibility of cooperation to satisfy mutual interests.

Economically, high-trust relationships have lower transaction costs and stimulate investment, production and trade, which in turn lead to economic growth.

In terms of connectedness, Universities UK International’s 2019 report International Graduate Outcomes found that 77 per cent of international graduates said they would be more likely to do business with the UK as a result of studying there; 81 per cent intended to build professional links with organisations in the UK; more than 80 per cent would recommend studying in the UK; and 88 per cent would visit as tourists.

World-leading

The UK therefore benefits hugely from so many alumni ending up in positions of power or influence. The Higher Education Policy Institute’s 2022 Soft Power Index found that 55 current world leaders had been educated in the UK—more than any other country except the US. This is partly due to the prestige of flagship scholarship programmes such as Chevening and Commonwealth Scholarships, which attract extraordinarily talented young people to study at UK universities.

Alumni who become world leaders are only the tip of the iceberg. Many others, including some of those on Great Scholarships funded jointly by the British Council and universities, or through Women in Stem Scholarships, become diplomats, government officials, scientists and business and community leaders.

This is important because many of the most pressing challenges facing the world today require cooperation not only at the government-to-government level but beyond. Civil society, including universities, businesses and community groups, needs to tackle poverty, pandemics, climate change and the management of scarce resources.

Sustainable development

In hitting the International Education Strategy’s target of 600,000 overseas students studying in the UK each year, the higher education sector has educated a huge number of people with whom the UK can cooperate to achieve the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.

The Study UK Alumni Awards give many examples of the exceptional contribution UK alumni have made to science and sustainability in their own countries, including tackling pollution in Jamaica and ghost fishing in Nigeria, where abandoned fishing gear continues to trap wildlife. UK alumni also helped to guide public health policy during the Covid-19 pandemic in Pakistan.

It matters that these friends are spread around as many countries as possible. The latest statistics suggest that the UK is doing very well at attracting students from China, India and Nigeria and is making good progress, from a lower base, in Indonesia, Malaysia and Saudi Arabia—testament to Steve Smith, the UK’s international education champion, as well as the Study UK campaign and the tireless work of international teams in universities around the world. Applications from non-EU international students as of January 2023 have increased by 21,050 (29 per cent) since 2020, to 94,410.

But the UK is doing less well in terms of applications from EU countries, which have dropped by more than 52 per cent since 2020, to 20,500. As these countries are its nearest neighbours, trading partners and allies, the UK needs to maintain strong links with them and must redouble its efforts here. Attracting students through marketing, scholarships, bursaries and strategic institutional partnerships that facilitate exchange of students and early career researchers is a highly effective way to do this, and so is maintaining connections with alumni.

Alumni are appreciating assets for the UK. It should invest in them.

Maddalaine Ansell is director of education at the British Council.

The post Friends for life appeared first on Research Professional News.

Ivory Tower: We check in with the UK’s leading University Media Relations team.

An office, somewhere in SW1…

McCall [on the phone]: Well, if he won’t let you do it, have you thought about Plan C, minister?… I don’t know… Two weeks in Ibiza for all post-docs?… You could tie it in with the mobility scheme… Call it Turing All-in… I’m sorry minister, I’m only trying to help… How is the new office, by the way?… Exactly the same as the old office, I see. Have they changed the plate on the door?… No, still the science minister, I see. So, remind me, what was the point of creating a new ministry for science?… No, me neither. Anyway, we are very grateful to have won the contract for media relations for the department, and we are working on the launch event as we speak… Oh yes, glitz and glamour minister, definitely… Well, you know that open deck bus of national treasures they wheeled out for the Queen’s platinum jubilee. Yes, well, most of them have said no, but we’ve got Brian Cox… no the other one… yes, I agree the other one would be better… look I’ve got to jump on a Zoom call with Sydney in a minute… no, Sydney, Australia, minister. Sorry, who did you say? Sidney who?… I don’t know who that is, minister… A TikTok star? No, I don’t think we’ve reached that stage of event planning yet, minister. I’ll keep you informed and brief you in a couple of days. Got to go, bye. [puts phone down] Although God knows we are scraping the bottom of the barrel when it comes to science policy.

Janet: Do you need me to set up the laptop for a Zoom, Mr McCall?

McCall: No, I just said that to get him off the phone. He’s becoming obsessed about the media launch for the new science ministry.

Janet: You mean, you lied to a client?

McCall: I was merely managing expectations. Don’t they teach you anything on that degree apprenticeship course?

Janet: I’m currently on a deep dive placement at the industry coal face.

McCall: What are you doing?

Janet: I was about to make Mr Juniper a cup of tea, would you like one?

McCall: Yes, please, and then let’s look at the invite list for this wretched science ministry launch.

Janet: Will do.

Juniper: Is everything alright, Oliver? You sound like a man out of love with his art.

McCall: I’ve really had enough of this government, Alexander, when are we getting a new one?

Juniper: Probably not until the end of next year. These are austere times, Oliver, you’ll just have to make do with the government you’ve got. See, if you can’t spin it out a bit longer.

McCall: I can’t believe Michelle Donelan is back.

Juniper: At least we don’t have to look at Grant Shapps anymore.

McCall: You could have fun pretending to forget his name. Sunak is just determined to make everything so bland and beige. I’m surprised he hasn’t brought back Greg Clark.

Juniper: Thank goodness for the DUP.

McCall: Quite, but they are blocking our Horizon Europe association field trip to Brussels.

Janet: Here’s a tea for you, Mr Juniper, and one for you Mr McCall, and here’s the list.

Juniper: This is entirely white.

Janet: I was trying to use up the milk before it goes off.

Juniper: No, this is a blank piece of paper.

Janet: Turn it over.

Juniper: Brian Cox? Anyone else?

McCall: That’s as far as we’ve got. You see, this government stinks so much of decay that no one in their right mind would want to be seen standing next to a minister at a gala event.

Juniper: Not even the vice-chancellors?

Janet: No, of course they are all coming.

McCall: Try and stop them.

Janet: And the science policy people, too. This is the celebrity list that will get us a photo on the front page of the broadsheets.

Juniper: Have we actually asked Brian Cox?

Janet: Which one?

Juniper: Either of them.

McCall: One said he would rather pluck his liver out with a knitting needle. The other hasn’t returned our call, so I’m banking that as a maybe.

Juniper: Where is this event?

Janet: The Science Museum.

Juniper: Ten out of ten for imagination, zero out of ten for levelling-up.

McCall: I am not getting on a train to Middlesbrough to drink a glass of lukewarm white wine and listen to a speech by the science minister.

Juniper: Isn’t there a science museum in Halifax?

McCall: I can see the headlines now: Minister’s Shock End in Happy Valley.

Janet: Might make it easier for one of the Brian Coxes to get there if he works in Manchester.

McCall: I can assure you that it is quicker to get a train from Manchester to London than it is to Halifax. Or it used to be…

Janet: We’d have to ship all the celebrities up north.

Juniper: Don’t they have celebrities up there?

Janet: Channel Four News has moved to Leeds.

McCall: So, that’s Cathy Newman, plus one, any others?

Juniper: I don’t think she’s personally moved to Leeds, it’s just the studio.

McCall: OK, so, that’s Cathy Newman’s cameraman plus one, any others?

Janet: Ant and Dec?

McCall: Shouldn’t they have some vague familiarity with science?

Juniper: Well, if you are going to draw that line, some people might query Michelle Donelan.

McCall: If only we still had dear old David Bellamy, he ticked every box: a bloke off the telly, had something to do with Durham, didn’t believe in climate change.

Juniper: Janet, have you still got that Scientists for Brexit list?

Janet: It was more of a post-it note.

Juniper: Can you remember who was on it?

Janet: They’ve all gone, I’m afraid.

McCall: They are all dead?

Janet: No, they’ve all moved to Europe.

McCall: This is hopeless. Northern science launch? Pigs might fly.

Janet: Higgs?

McCall: No, pigs, do try to keep up Janet.

Janet: No, Peter Higgs.

Juniper: Is he one of those TikTok stars?

Janet: No, Peter Higgs is a Nobel Prize winner, as in the Higgs-Boson particle. I listened to a podcast about it the other day. I think he’s from Newcastle or somewhere.

McCall: Brilliant, Janet! I can see the headline now, “Minister and Nobel Winner in Happy Valley Sunlit Uplands”. They’ll love that. You look for Higgs’ email, I’ll phone the minister [picks up the phone, dials] George, how are you?… Good, good, look we’ve made a bit of progress here and think we’ve found you a science super star to launch you as a science superpower…

Juniper: Well done, Janet, excellent work. Have you managed to find an email address?

Janet: Oh dear, Mr Juniper.

Juniper: What’s up? What have you found?

McCall [still on phone]: Yes, I think we should book an entire train load of ministers, scientists and celebs to Halifax, leaving from Euston, we’ll call it the Innovation Nation Express…

Janet: I don’t think Peter Higgs will be suitable after all.

Juniper: Why not? He’s not been cancelled, has he?

Janet: Worse than that Mr Juniper, he was heavily involved with the university lecturers’ trade union at the University of Edinburgh. It says here, he thinks he caused so much trouble that the university wanted to sack him, had it not been for the chance he might win a Nobel Prize.

Juniper: Probably not an ideal candidate to sit next to Rishi Sunak at dinner. Better show, Oliver.

McCall [on phone]: We could deck the place out in fun science stuff. What’s that thing when you roll down a hill in a giant plastic ball? Zorbing? Do you think Rishi would want to do that?… You think he looks enough like a hamster already? Interesting… hold on minister, my colleague is just alerting me to some breaking news [covers the mouthpiece] what is it Alexander, this had better be important?

Juniper: Read this.

McCall: Peter Higgs bla, bla bla… Nobel Prize bla, bla, bla… apologies, minister, I’ll be with you in just one minute… University of Edinburgh bla, bla, bla… trade union firebrand! Ah, I see… hello, minister, are you still there? Yes, it looks as if Sydney is back online now. I’ll have to go, I’m afraid. I think my colleagues have had a really productive redesign of your launch event. Nobel Prizes are so old hat, no media appeal in that. Have you thought about TikTok stars? Influencing young people through digital… Yes, we could still have the train from Euston, full of ministers and TikTokers… and vice-chancellors… Yes, if you really want to, we can call it Freeman’s Highway. Ok got to go now, Sydney and all that, bye.

Juniper: That was a close one.

Janet: I think I’ll make another cup of tea and look out the West Coast line timetable and that post-it note of TikTokers for Brexit.

Terms of use: this is a free email for fun on a Friday, it should be shared among friends like a tip off about a fresh consignment of tomatoes in Lidl. Want to book a seat on the Innovation Nation Express? Want to say hello? Email [email protected]

The post Stars in their eyes appeared first on Research Professional News.

Strong UK response raises broader questions about higher education’s humanitarian role, says Jamie Arrowsmith

One year ago, as the world watched in horror as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine unfolded, the UK higher education community was vociferous in its response and unanimous in its support for the people of Ukraine.

Statements condemning the invasion were swift and unequivocal, followed by sanctions and advice to end research and education partnerships with Russia. These were necessary but small steps in signalling our condemnation of the war.

However, it was clear that action was also needed—what could universities do to help? Understanding how to respond, and how to target resources to deliver effective support to those affected was initially a challenge.

As a first response, Universities UK International drew together a task group of universities, government departments, funders, sector agencies and third-sector organisations to think through the immediate issues. This allowed the sector to prioritise and assign actions.

This group’s work informed the UK government response, helping to identify visa and immigration issues, and the need for targeted hardship support. The rapid deployment of resources for students and policy changes to support Ukrainian nationals demonstrated that, when working together with a common objective, both the government and the sector can move very quickly indeed.

Twinning programme

This work was vital, but it was reactive. It wasn’t a considered and strategic effort to work out what support the Ukrainian university community wanted from the UK. Thankfully, we were approached by an organisation with strong ties to the region, Cormack Consultancy Group (CCG).

Its founder, Charles Cormack, helped convene a meeting of British and Ukrainian university leaders to discuss how the UK could best support them. The answer from Ukraine was simple: help us stay open.

From this meeting, the UK-Ukraine twinning initiative was born. The idea is simple: universities in the two countries are brought together, supported by CCG, to develop a strategic partnership, consisting of a five-year collaboration with a bespoke agreement.

At an institutional level, the aim is to help ensure universities can continue to operate. At a more strategic level, the ambitions are to maintain the integrity of Ukrainian higher education, help prevent brain drain, and position Ukraine’s universities to emerge from the crisis with the resources, skills and international experience to make a full contribution to the reconstruction.

To date, more than 100 partnerships have been established. Hundreds of Ukrainian students have visited the UK twin on mobility programmes. New research collaborations have been fostered. Practical support, from providing computers and furniture to access to learning resources and academic infrastructure, has helped mitigate some of the damage done to campuses and infrastructure.

In September 2022, the #TwinforHope campaign was launched to share stories from these collaborations. The programme has received funding from the UK foreign office and UK Research and Innovation has provided £5 million for research and innovation activities within the partnerships.

Beyond Ukraine

The programme is testament to the huge amount of work and support from across the sector and the team at CCG. Beyond twinning, the UK government and British Academy launched the Researchers at Risk scheme, Refugee Education UK has developed a platform to make it easier for displaced students from anywhere find information on scholarships in the UK. And longstanding organisations such as the Council for At-Risk Academics continue to provide an invaluable service.

Over the past year, it’s been humbling to support the work of so many committed and inspiring people through the Twinning scheme. And yet it has also highlighted challenges in how the higher education community responds to humanitarian crises.

First, despite the phenomenal support provided by the UK government, universities have struggled to offer help to Ukraine’s international students. While UK visa, immigration and funding policy mean these students cannot be easily supported, this feels unsatisfactory as a response.

Second, the war has raised questions over how universities can respond to other crises. The Twinning scheme is built on very particular circumstances, including clear political and public support, policy change and, of course, funding.

These things matter, but the question of whether universities could do more, as a community, to mobilise that support in response to other crises is absolutely the right one.

UK universities have been clear in their support for Ukraine, and for their peers, colleagues and the students affected by the war. Our Ukrainian partners are equally clear that these collaborations are for the long term. And we, as a university community, need to learn and understand how we can better support universities, students and researchers affected by other humanitarian crises.

Jamie Arrowsmith is the director of Universities UK International

The post Make universities’ help for Ukraine a model for other crises appeared first on Research Professional News.

Iain Gillespie looks at what Nicola Sturgeon’s resignation could mean for Scotland’s universities

Nicola Sturgeon’s resignation as Scottish first minister is one of those points in the cycle that prompts the question: ‘What next?’

While it marks a change in leadership and not government, the person who occupies the role of first minister has an undeniable impact on the direction of policy, the priorities the government takes forward and the resources attached to those priorities.

Over the years, several policy agendas have been described as defining priorities for Sturgeon. While one of these—widening access to higher education to underrepresented students—meant there was a shared commitment between the first minister and universities, it is fair to say that research, development and innovation were not as close to her heart.

Sturgeon’s successor will also have their own passion projects: specific areas of policy or opportunities for Scotland that personally excite them and that stand slightly above the full spectrum of government business. So Sturgeon’s resignation and the prospect of Scotland’s first new leader for eight years is an interesting time to speculate on the future prominence that research could have.

Early reflections on Sturgeon’s legacy will also prompt Scottish National Party contenders for the role of first minister to consider what they want their impact to be. The set of issues waiting in their in-tray is considerable. Among them is the need to catalyse stronger, inclusive economic growth in Scotland. Universities are a huge asset and willing partner to assist the next first minister in driving greater progress.

Continuity and change

Regardless of the change of first minister, we expect continuity from the Scottish government in a number of areas. University research is already a prominent feature of Scottish government strategies, some of them published very recently. It is unlikely that we will see a change in the architecture of strategies such as the National Strategy for Economic Transformation or the inward investment and export growth plans. Universities occupy a central part of the narrative of those strategies and we will be hoping that this remains true.

Scotland’s R&D community is also expecting an innovation strategy imminently since this has been the subject of considerable consultation and is fairly well developed. One cannot imagine that the change in leader will signal a significant change in direction here.

However, there are opportunities for the Scottish government to connect its narrative to action and investment in more meaningful ways, if the next first minister were so inclined.

There’s much in these strategies that points to expansion of existing routes to impact and some interesting new ideas to be pursued. There is also new policy thinking around—and potential investment in—entrepreneurship, company formation and growth. There are new ideas on city and regional growth, drawing on areas of established research strength, including collaborative initiatives around fostering and securing inward investment.

So while the strategies might not change significantly, we might see adjustments in the policies and decisions beneath them—and there are opportunities here that merit consideration.

Research base

There needs to be greater concentration on the foundations for the research base. These strategies acknowledge that a strong research base is key but they are insufficiently attentive to the realities of sustaining it in the face of global competition. There is already strong evidence of the need for far greater focus and action on our research base, where support for its sustenance is rapidly falling behind that of other home nations and our competitors.

Recent years have seen a decline in the share of research council funding won by Scotland’s universities, which fell from a peak of 15.7 per cent of the UK total in 2012-13 to 13.4 per cent in 2020-21. This needs to be a cause for concern.

As a review by the Scottish Funding Council of tertiary education and research reflected in 2021: “The trend indicates that Scotland’s research base is increasingly being outperformed by other nations of the UK in terms of our research council funding share and we should consider whether we are positioned appropriately to win new types of funding flowing from UK Research and Innovation.”

The response to these challenges and the route back to punching above our weight as a nation is more nuanced than simply injections of more funding into core grants. However, funding does ultimately matter a great deal and the ability to compete successfully within a UK landscape for research grants matters too. It is concerning that the Scottish government has not used Barnett consequentials to match the profile of investment flowing to institutions in England through Research England.

Funding policy

While budget decisions would have been difficult for any first minister of any government in the context of current public finances, the whispers are that Scotland’s last budget round and the spending decisions in it very much reflected the decision-making of the first minister—more so even than of the finance secretary.

The broadly flat trajectory of research funding for Scotland’s universities over the past decade not only diminishes the contribution that the sector can make economically, culturally and societally; it also diminishes universities’ direct impacts. Work by London Economics shows that the sector in Scotland delivers an 8:1 economic impact for every £1 invested in research.

There is a case, then—and potential opportunity—for a reappraisal of funding policy for our research base, alongside implementation of the new initiatives in the Scottish government’s economic strategies. Indeed, the best delivery of those strategies is dependent on such a reappraisal.

Business partnerships

Strategy and policy should also put a much stronger focus on enabling universities to leverage not just Innovate UK resources but the wide breadth of industry and charity partnership. Scotland’s business base is very different from that of the rest of the UK. Universities can and need to be more of a catalytic force in support of innovation and investment for the business community and for regional growth. But we need the right policy support structures.

As an example, Scotland’s universities are far more likely to be lead partners in successful project bids to Innovate UK—at around 30 per cent of the time—than those in other parts of the UK; in south-east England, that figure is only 10 per cent. As Scottish government policy seeks stronger growth in the economy, such policy must be tailored to local economic circumstances and fully enable universities to play the leading role where needed.

Sturgeon’s successor has three years until Scots next go to the polls. That is a good amount of time to make a mark and score some significant policy wins against which to be judged by the electorate. Research, development, innovation and enterprise have the potential to play into this political context in a powerful way. It will be the job of universities to demonstrate our worth, show what we can deliver and make the case for the right funding and policy structures to the next first minister.

Iain Gillespie is principal and vice-chancellor of the University of Dundee and research and knowledge exchange committee convenor for Universities Scotland.

The post First minister, next steps appeared first on Research Professional News.

Ivory Tower: Another REF return of a celebrity academic

A study in Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters. A Research Excellence Framework officer is waiting at the table; Professor X enters.

Officer: Thank you for making time to see me.

Prof X: Anything to help the university.

Officer: I know it’s early in the cycle, but I’d just like to touch base about your plans.

Prof X: For the school?

Officer: For the REF.

Prof X: Is that a supervillain?

Officer: Some think so. We prefer to think of it as an essential tool in the management of performance.

Prof X: Well, I think you’ll find my team is ready to go.

Officer: Can I just check for my records, what is the name of your team?

Prof X: The X-Men.

Officer: “Men?”

Prof X: The X-Men, yes.

Officer: I’m not sure you can say that these days.

Prof X: Sorry?

Officer: The university has an Athena Swan bronze, so I’m not sure you can call yourself that.

Prof X: It’s just a name.

Officer: You can’t just employ men. Did you not get the memo on diversity and opportunity?

Prof X: We are a very diverse group.

Officer: Are you?

Prof X: Yes, my team are all mutants.

Officer: Dear oh dear, professor, have you completed the unconscious bias training?

Prof X: I’m telepathic, if that’s what you mean?

Officer: That’s too much information, professor. I would have thought a simply descriptive name for your team would be more appropriate.

Prof X: Such as?

Officer: Well, it would usually be something like, The Centre for Research into bla, bla, bla…

Prof X: We don’t do bla, bla, bla.

Officer: That’s what I’m here to find out. Perhaps you could describe your research.

Prof X: Research?

Officer: Yes, you are a professor with a significant responsibility to conduct research.

Prof X: How long have you got?

Officer: It would be a good idea if you could explain your research to a layman.

Prof X: “Man?”

Officer: Person.

Prof X: Well, the question of “man” is very important here. You could say I am a specialist in the next stage of human evolution.

Officer: Is that Panel A or Panel B?

Prof X: Some of us have special powers.

Officer: Like a vice-chancellor?

Prof X: Is that a supervillain?

Officer: I couldn’t possibly comment.

Prof X: Some of us will always earn the suspicion and envy of others.

Officer: You mean you have research grants?

Prof X: Many, and we have used them to protect humanity.

Officer: Sounds as if this could be an impact case study.

Prof X: To support those special individuals I founded a school for the gifted.

Officer: Is that like one of those Maths schools?

Prof X: It doesn’t have very many students, if that’s what you mean.

Officer: Teaching quality isn’t really my thing. I’ll leave that one to the OfS.

Prof X: Is that a supervillain?

Officer: Yeah, totally. Can I ask you, professor…. sorry, my records are incomplete, it just says here Professor X.

Prof X: Xavier.

Officer: Are you Spanish?

Prof X: No.

Officer: That’s good.

Prof X: Don’t you like Spaniards?

Officer: Not at all, I was just thinking about the whole EU thing.

Prof X: Don’t you like the EU?

Officer: I just meant, who knows where we will be by the time the next REF comes around.

Prof X: Still not associated with Horizon Europe, probably.

Officer: Can I ask how you came to be a professor?

Prof X: I have PhDs in genetics, biophysics, psychology and anthropology, with a two-year residence at Pembroke College, University of Oxford. I also received an MD in psychiatry while spending several years in London. I was later appointed adjunct professor at Columbia University in New York.

Officer: OK, but that makes you, overqualified, part-time, precarious Contract X, rather than Professor X.

Prof X: It’s all a bit hazy after that.

Officer: OK, tell me, what is it that you and your team do here?

Prof X: We save humanity.

Officer: You mean vaccine research?

Prof X: No, we fly about in a supersonic plane and use our special powers to fight supervillains.

Officer: Unpack that for me. Plane?

Prof X: I designed it myself.

Officer: Right, that’s the aeronautical engineering unit of assessment.

Prof X: The team are interdisciplinary. You should meet them.

Officer: That would be helpful. Are any of them independent researchers?

Prof X: There’s Wolverine, he’s pretty independent.

Officer: Good, and what is Dr Wolverine’s role?

Prof X: He’s an animal.

Officer: If you can refrain from the personal comments, professor. Have they made any kind of scientific breakthrough?

Prof X: Adamantium.

Officer: Sorry?

Prof X: He has adamantium claws.

Officer: Claws?

Prof X: Yes, a unique skill.

Officer: It’s certainly unusual for a postdoc. But did I hear you right, “adamantium”?

Prof X: Yes, it’s a special alloy.

Officer: Surely it’s a made-up word that sounds a bit like Adam Ant?

Prof X: It’s closer to Captain America’s vibramium.

Officer: I’m beginning to wonder if you should be in the UoA for chemistry or creative writing. Who else is in your team?

Prof X: Storm.

Officer: Dr Storm?

Prof X: No, but she’s a great teacher, the students love her. Wherever she goes she brings the weather with her.

Officer: Yes, I have an aunt and uncle who are like that. Anyone else in your team who does research?

Prof X: Jean Grey.

Officer: At last, a normal name. What does she do?

Prof X: She has the ability to destroy worlds.

Officer: Is she a peer reviewer?

Prof X: No, she is married to the one we call ‘Cyclops’.

Officer: Look, you really need to do that training. Perhaps, you could just tell me what it is you do?

Prof X: I plug myself into Cerebro.

Officer: I’m sorry I asked.

Prof X: It is a machine of my own creation, which allows me to read the minds of everyone on the planet.

Officer: That’s interesting, have you thought about commercialisation?

Prof X: With great power comes great responsibility.

Officer: Yes, but you must have registered the IP. Surely, you could sell a service to businesses.

Prof X: Like what?

Officer: Advertising? How many people are thinking about having sausages for dinner, or something?

Prof X: I think you really misunderstand our work here. Cerebro has been used by the US government.

Officer: Influencing policymakers, now we’re talking. What did you use it for?

Prof X: To hunt down rogue mutants.

Officer: And you were doing so well.

Prof X: However, my old foe Magneto uses an anti-psychic helmet to prevent me from reading his mind.

Officer: I’m beginning to wonder whether you have ethical clearance for all this.

Prof X: We once worked together but now he is my nemesis.

Officer: You mean you used to co-author papers but now he is the third reviewer?

Prof X: Something like that. Look, I’m rather busy today, is there anything else?

Officer: Yes, finally, can I ask, do you use Researchfish?

Prof X: That is a supervillain, right?

Officer: I think we are done here, professor. Can we expect to see you at the Research Leaders’ Forum?

Prof X: The university will stop my grant if I don’t come, yes?

Officer: Absolutely.

Prof X: OK, see you on Wednesday.

Terms of use: this is a free email for fun on a Friday. It should be shared among colleagues like nomination papers for the leadership of the Scottish National Party. Want to see Charles Xavier’s citation index? Want to say hello? Email [email protected]

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Disabled research students face barriers that are still poorly understood, says Pete Quinn

Even though disabled people are protected by equalities legislation, they have historically been marginalised in higher education and academia. This is especially true for PhD students, for whom many of the adjustments and accommodations available to disabled people on undergraduate or taught postgrad courses are not appropriate. 

A 2022 report from Disabled Students UK (DSUK), the largest disabled student-led organisation in the UK, found that a large majority of disabled research students were unhappy with the support they received from their institution during the Covid-19 pandemic. The pandemic has resulted in increasing numbers of disabled PhD students reporting chronic health issues, including with mental health and long Covid.

The experience of disabled PhD students in the UK is still under-researched. To remedy that, I’m working with DSUK and the University of Oxford’s Interdisciplinary Bioscience Doctoral Training Partnership, with funding from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), to conduct a survey of disabled PhD students in the life sciences across the UK. We are investigating the lived experience of disabled and neurodivergent PhD students, looking at challenges as well as examples of good practice. The project covers every stage of doctoral training, including admissions, funding, transition, progression, placements and fieldwork. 

Challenging the challenges

A report published last year, Inequality in Early Career Research in the Life Sciences, found that 12.4 per cent of students beginning a postgraduate research degree in these disciplines report having a disability. It also found that disabled students take longer to finish their PhDs, and that students who self-reported a mental health difficulty were more likely to drop out of their course.

Doctoral candidates funded by the research councils, including the BBSRC, can apply through their institutions for a Disabled Students’ Allowance. This provides funds for things such as specialist equipment and transport. However, the take-up and effectiveness of this support is unclear. Assessment and recommendations can also be overly influenced by a focus on adjustments around lectures and assessments that are less relevant to doctoral learning. 

Whether a disabled PhD student receives adequate support often depends on individual supervisors or academic administrators having a good knowledge of disability and how best to support disabled students. 

When these are lacking, disabled PhD students can face difficulties in securing accessible study areas and labs, and in obtaining appropriate adjustments during assessments, especially the viva exam. They may struggle to obtain necessary extensions to their studies due to funding arrangements that fail to take into account the impact of disability. 

There can also be a failure to acknowledge the damage that inaccessible environments do to the academic progress of PhD students, and on their wellbeing more generally. DSA funding does not always compensate for the ‘disability tax’ represented by the need for extra time and resources, or the need to use specialist equipment or lab space at particular times. 

PhD students exist on the edge of professional academia while retaining student status. Current provision needs to be investigated if disabled students are to be better supported to meet their academic goals and complete their studies without any detrimental effects. The quality of support will shape their professional goals and careers, whether in academia, industry or other sectors. 

The survey has received a good response and the team has held structured conversations with academic and professional support staff from many BBSRC-funded doctoral training programmes and across associated institutions. Data are being analysed, but we welcome further written reports or conversations about the experiences of supporting disabled doctoral students. All this will inform our final report, created using feedback from both staff and doctoral students. This aims to provide a detailed insight into the lived experience of disabled PhD students, to identify examples of best practice and to offer recommendations for improvements.

Pete Quinn is an independent consultant and former head of the disability advisory service at the University of Oxford and director of student support at the University of York

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British Academy scheme will target hidden costs that block access to funding, says Simon Swain

The relentless cycle of grant applications, oscillating unpredictably between rejection and success, is a professional peculiarity of academic life. The time commitment required to complete just one grant application is significant—estimates put it at up to several working weeks. But for some researchers, the process carries a hidden financial burden.

For instance, an applicant who has caring responsibilities will face a distinct set of time and resource constraints compared with one who doesn’t have those pressures. A researcher living with sensory impairments may benefit from help to navigate the grant application system. Costs such as these may be a barrier to applying for funding. Particularly in the current economic climate, the expenses and opportunity costs associated with application processes are keenly felt. 

Eliminating disparities

As funders, we must strive to eliminate these disparities in opportunity. No one should be disadvantaged because of circumstances beyond their control.

The British Academy has been looking at how best to tackle these financial inequities. This is why, from 16 February, we are introducing a new £100,000 fund to provide additional support. The fund is open to existing award holders, to ensure that costs for things such as childcare or assistance do not come out of their overall research award. 

Crucially, it is also open to potential applicants. From application to award, and throughout a grant’s duration, our aim is to make the academy’s research funding inclusive to the broadest possible pool of eligible researchers.

The new scheme was conceived in 2020 by a working group tasked with making recommendations for best practice across the academy’s research funding programmes. Since then, there has been much effort behind the scenes to turn those recommendations into action; the launch of this fund signals a milestone in that work.

The initiative is part of the academy’s effort to extend our commitment to equity, diversity and inclusion beyond rhetoric and into practice. It builds on recent work, such as a trial of partial randomisation in our Small Research Grants selection process and our partnership in the EDI Caucus, a £3.4 million initiative tasked with identifying, assessing and sharing EDI best practice in the UK’s research and development landscape, and “building an evidence base of what enables marginalised researchers and innovators to thrive in their careers”.

To ensure the new support has the flexibility to adapt to researchers’ needs, the academy will gather feedback during an initial pilot phase and use this to shape the scheme’s future.

The scheme will remain open on a rolling basis for applicants, who must be either planning to, or are in the process of, applying for academy funding, or already hold an award. A review committee will turn applications around in 4-6 weeks; those approved will be confirmed by the British Academy’s research committee. 

Applications will be considered on a case-by-case basis. There is currently no upper limit on how much an individual can request to cover their needs; the fund is there to be used.

We hope this scheme will help alleviate unfair financial burdens on those ­under-represented in the current system. Breaking away from unequal practices in the research community will require taking risks and embracing bold initiatives. 

Simon Swain is vice-president for research and higher education policy at the British Academy and professor of classics and vice-president for engagement at the University of Warwick

This article also appeared in Research Fortnight

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Horizon end game draws near—a long-term view is needed

On the surface, Michelle Donelan’s controversial recent opinion piece said little that should have shocked researchers.

Amid the now-familiar government praise for the UK’s innovative scientists, the head of the newly created Department for Science, Innovation and Technology discussed the UK’s long-in-limbo access to the EU’s €95.5 billion (£84.4bn) research and innovation funding programme, Horizon Europe.

“I know…that the sector is keen to know about our future association with Horizon,” she wrote.

The UK remains shut out of the programme. Its association deal is stalled, with the European Commission refusing to sign it off until disputes over trade with Northern Ireland have been settled.

“I will engage with the sector as my top priority and work closely with them before I set out our position in the coming weeks, but I will not sit idly by while our researchers are sidelined,” wrote Donelan. “If we cannot associate, we are more than ready to go it alone with our own global-facing alternative…The time for waiting is quickly coming to an end and I will not shy away from striking out alone.”

On its face, this is not hugely different from past statements by science minister George Freeman, who is also ensconced in the new department under Donelan.

In October 2021, Freeman said the UK’s “longstanding commitment and offer to stay in Horizon stands” but that “if the EU decide the Northern Ireland protocol politics stops UK joining Horizon Europe, we have a bold plan B”.

It is wise to be cautious when attempting to read the runes from every comma and verb in ministers’ messages. But the possible change in emphasis from Donelan is worrying some in the sector, with, for example, Mike Galsworthy describing it as “not the most full-throated pro-science position”.

The pause in UK access to Horizon has certainly been damaging. UK researchers were reliably at the top of the winners’ tables for a plethora of EU R&D grants before Brexit, whereas now EU data indicate that their successes are being significantly diminished.

It would still be a huge loss if the government were to walk away from Horizon Europe. The collaborations forged with European colleagues are about far more than just money.

But the money is important, and it would not be realistic to expect universities and other organisations to keep hanging on forever if their income dwindles and vital research goes unfunded.

If Horizon access materialises, UK researchers will need support, patience and time to claw back their previous successes. If it does not, the money they have lost will need to be replaced, and they will need help forging new international links.

Neither of those paths will be easy. Both will require strong support from science ministers. The question is not just what schemes are needed now, but what will be needed in years to come.

The EU is already considering what the next iteration of its research programme will look like. Donelan and Freeman need to take a similarly long-term view of what they want UK research to be.

This article also appeared in Research Fortnight

The post Time running out appeared first on Research Professional News.

New department will aid science policy but poses questions for science advice, says David Willetts

In December 2010, Vince Cable, then Liberal Democrat business secretary in the coalition government, was secretly recorded saying that he had “declared war” on Rupert Murdoch. In the fallout, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) lost responsibility for digital technologies to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. Software and hardware, in other words, were separated. 

By closing this divide, the most dysfunctional in the system, the new Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) marks a step forward for UK science and research. 

The split had caused cabinet committees on science and technology to get bogged down in arguments about which department was responsible for quantum technologies or cybersecurity. It has also held up the semiconductor strategy. Giving the new department responsibility for technology in all its forms resolves the problem.

The creation of DSIT also recognises that the business department lost interest in key technologies in about 2015. Since then it has been led by the Office for Science and Technology Strategy, which is also brought into the new structure. 

This does, however, open up a delicate issue. The classic model of science policy, developed by the OECD in the 1960s, distinguishes between policy for science and science for policy. In my time as science minister, for example, then chief scientist John Beddington advised the whole government on the impact of the Fukushima earthquake and Icelandic volcanic eruption, as part of a distinct unit serving the cabinet and all of Whitehall.

Policy for science required a different way of working under the science minister. That model was not perfect, but if anything Fukushima enhanced its reputation. Beddington briefed cabinet and publicly stated that the risk of radiation reaching Tokyo was tiny, so British citizens need not evacuate. 

It was a striking contrast to France’s decision to pull out its diplomats. Afterwards, the Japanese government asked how it could create a post of chief scientific adviser with similar independent authority. That was how our classic model was supposed to work.

During the Covid crisis, the current chief scientist Patrick Vallance developed an exceptionally close working relationship with the prime minister and others at the top of government. That is a good thing. Unsurprisingly, Vallance has also come to play a larger role in policy for science. 

Is this a temporary change shaped by the intensity of the Covid crisis and the gifts of one man, or a permanent new model? How will the new department organise around these two functions? The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, which succeeded BIS, hosted both the science minister and the chief scientist, but the latter served cabinet as a whole. Is that subtle but important distinction to continue? How will it work in practice? 

Such questions raise another key issue. The biggest change in British science and technology policy over the past few years has been the growing importance of the security perspective. This rescued strategic support for technologies from Beis’s indifference. A Cambridge academic and entrepreneur once asked me why the security services were so interested in his technology that they wanted to check who invested in it, yet the Treasury and Beis were so unsure of its potential that they refused to fund it. 

Cabinet’s National Science and Technology Council created in 2021 was one place where civil and security perspectives came together. How will that work now? 

One reason why UK industrial strategy collapsed after World War II was a failure to work out how to commercialise technologies developed with a security requirement. The new department is a chance to revisit that challenge. A good working relationship with the Ministry of Defence will be crucial.

The other crucial relationship will be with the Department for Education. Universities are fundamental to the UK’s research effort, and the science superpower agenda depends on their growth. The DfE, however, doesn’t much like universities, rather wishes fewer people went to them, and is presiding over a steady fall in the unit of resource per student. This in turn means revenues from overseas students are subsidising the costs of teaching domestic students, whereas until recently they have subsidised research. 

It is dysfunctional to have one department responsible for university teaching and another for research. Far better to put universities as a whole in the new department. As a minimum, the DfE should recognise that the science superpower agenda cannot be delivered without its active support for universities. 

David Willetts was minister for universities and science, 2010-2014, and is now a Conservative peer

This article also appeared in Research Fortnight

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Back page gossip from the 15 February issue of Research Fortnight

Name and shame

So, farewell to the Department for Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy (Beis), which has now become the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ), the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) and the Department for Business and Trade (DBAT).

The acronyms may be unwieldy but are not as risqué as the one reported to have been considered in 2005 by the Blair government, when the business department was to be renamed Productivity, ENergy, Industry and Science. The honourable member who would have led the department was Alan Johnson.

Sports science

Since returning from the Qatar World Cup, Brighton and Hove Albion’s Japanese winger, Kaoru Mitoma, has been in rich form. He has also become a perhaps unlikely ambassador for university research.

The footballer initially delayed becoming a professional to attend the University of Tsukuba, 50 kilometres northeast of Tokyo.

His research involved running with the ball while recording how he and his opponent reacted with the aim to work out the best way to move past. Wearing a camera on his head, he observed what his eyes focused on while he dribbled and crunched the data on a computer.

Since his work became the subject of numerous articles in the football press, ‘Kaoru Mitoma thesis’ has become a top search term.

Skills legacy

University technical colleges were once heralded as a new dawn in addressing the UK’s persistent skills gap. The brainchild of former education secretary Kenneth Baker, they were introduced by the coalition government in 2010 as specialist secondary schools, sponsored by a university, and with close ties to business and industry and funded direct by the Department for Education.

This month the Watford UTC became the 13th school to close since the programme began, with three further schools choosing to ditch UTC status. That means over 30 per cent of all UTCs have now been shuttered, with 50 established since 2010.

Poor student enrolment is said to be the reason for the Watford closure. The UTC was sponsored by the University of Hertfordshire and Hilton Worldwide, whose headquarters is based in the town.

The UTC scheme has been characterised by weak enrolment, Ofsted concerns and poor student outcomes, with a 2019 National Audit Office report noting that while 37 per cent of school students took the English Baccalaureate, at UTCs only six per cent did. Plans are still afoot for three further UTCs in Southampton, Portsmouth and Doncaster.

Deadly debates

Freshly installed as a minister of state in the new Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, George Freeman found himself on Question Time last week defending his party’s new deputy chair, who has expressed support for the death penalty. Not that Freeman supports the death penalty himself, he was quick to stress. But “parliament is a place that needs to speak for all the people in this country, even voices we don’t all want to hear”.

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Mary Curnock Cook reports on how students have been faring since Covid

It has been a year since the publication of a major report on the effects of the coronavirus pandemic on students, which seems a good time to reflect on progress.

The UPP Foundation’s Student Futures Commission, which I chair, set out to understand what impact the pandemic had on aspiring and current students and to crowdsource pragmatic solutions from the sector—and from students—about how to get student futures back on track.

We identified an underlying crisis of confidence among students, who were worried about their personal and professional relationships, had growing imposter syndrome because of what they thought of as ‘fake grades’ from school, were worried about graduate jobs and had fragile mental health in the face of the anticipated stretch they expected from their higher education. Months of loneliness and of isolation from the norms of student life had taken their toll.

Challenging times

The thick of the Covid pandemic might feel like a distant nightmare, but while the context has changed, the challenges for students have changed less than everyone might have wished. Reports from around the sector indicate that attendance has been challenging this year, student support and mental health services have been under increasing pressure and more students are behind or failing in their academic progress, with a resultant uptick in dropouts.

The hangover from Covid, a perma-crisis of spiralling costs of food and energy, war in Ukraine, geopolitical instability and industrial action (including in universities themselves) have combined to turn the carefree intellectual journey that students may have imagined into an increasingly anxious, demanding and in some cases unaffordable challenge. Our key recommendations from a year ago feel just as relevant today.

The diagram below shows the subtle framing shifts that the commission’s work in 2021 identified.

Of these, the strongest echoes that I hear across the sector relate to two interconnected themes: belonging, and co-creation with students.

‘Belonging’ may not be a new concept but it has become part of the central discourse about student engagement. It was featured in a major piece of research conducted by Pearson. Co-creation with students—or ‘students as partners’—has become a mainstream approach to effecting change and action across universities. I was delighted to notice the words ‘co-creation’, ‘co-production’ and ‘students as partners’ popping up in my judging task for almost every entry to a university employability strategy award recently.

Some 30 universities have signed up to create student futures manifestos to capture and communicate the ways in which, with students, they could commit to securing successful student futures. I’m looking forward to attending the launch of one next month. This year, the UPP Foundation will be hosting a series of regional meetings and workshops with those who committed to developing a manifesto, as well as those that are adopting some or all of the Student Futures Commission pledges. This will provide welcome opportunities to update and refresh our approach.

Cross-sector teamwork

My engagement with the sector following the commission’s work has given me new insights. Talking to hundreds of colleagues through engagement with, for example, the Association of Graduate Careers Advisory Services, the Higher Education Institutional Research network, the Association of Heads of University Administration, the Change Agents’ Network and the Chartered Association of Business Schools, as well as several universities, only amplified how important focusing on successful student futures is.

Clearly, commitment to successful student futures resonates throughout and across university functions, within professional services and academic teams alike.

New to me was the university technician community and the Talent programme, designed to increase the visibility of university technicians. These professionals, who work in close proximity to students, often play pivotal support roles and have a unique insight into the prevailing mood in student cohorts.

One debate, with the Higher Education Institutional Research network, centred on whether to evaluate the impact of student futures manifestos or whether they represented something more akin to a cultural movement that should be allowed to flourish organically. Would they be more successful without the constraints of research and evaluation? Would this give students more agency and fewer boundaries within which to imagine their future selves?

Blended learning

In the backdrop to all these conversations were ongoing debates about blended learning, government calls for a return to face-to-face teaching and a reminder that the general public still believes that university teaching takes place almost entirely in lectures. Low attendance at some lectures and other face-to-face events, coupled with a steady stream of press stories bemoaning the insufficiency of online learning in universities, was undoubtedly challenging.

Students, it seems, want both—especially since many more of them are juggling part-time work to help pay the bills or have disabilities and caring responsibilities that make it hard for them to get to classes on campus. Some still lack the confidence to interact with peers and academics, and they vote with their screens to stay away.

Universities are working hard to accommodate these variable preferences, and this has, once again, highlighted the difficulty of presenting a digital or flexible model when many still lack the fundamental technology infrastructure needed. Digital transformation strategies are being prioritised or reimagined, with knock-on effects for facilities and estates, requiring costly modernisation of technology infrastructure.

The university sector has always been resilient in times of challenge, but everything points to the need for more investment. In these difficult times, the current fees and funding settlement, frozen in England until 2025, may not stretch to deliver what students want and need to secure a successful future.

Mary Curnock Cook is chair of the UPP Foundation’s Student Futures Commission.

A version of this article appeared in Research Europe

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Ivory Tower: eyes down for a test of your numeracy and your patience

Assessment for the degree of:

BSc Trussonomics

Incorporating the Rishi Sunak certificate in Extra Maths*

[*Approval of government expenditure, training and employment of additional maths teachers, and redesign of entire post-16 educational offer in England and Wales required. Available from 2025—maybe.]

Module 101: Economic Growth and Tax Cuts

You must use an AI chat bot to complete your answers.

Assessment is subject to a marking boycott.

You have 49 days to complete.

You have 40 years to repay your student loan.

Terms and conditions apply.

Paper validated by the Quality Street Assurance Agency, Microsoft Office for Students, the Anti-Growth Coalition, and the Guardian-Reading Tofu-Eating Wokerati.

Section 1: Kwasi Rational Economics

1. If Liz spends 49 days as prime minister and her mini-budget costs the taxpayer £30bn, how many days is it before she is allowed to make a political comeback with a front-page op-ed in the Telegraph? Express your answer as a fraction of the outrage felt by the taxpayer.

2. How long must a deluded rant by an ex-prime minister about her failed economic policies be before we are obliged to refer to it as an “essay”? Do not exceed 4,000 words to justify yourself.

3. Liz and Kwasi have run up debts. They pass the terms of the loan onto Jeremy and Rishi. Draw a graph to explain the declining popularity of Jeremy and Rishi over time: stop at 2024, no data are necessary after that. Express Liz and Kwasi in negative terms.

Section 2: Sound Money

4. If you need to put off £40bn worth of public spending cuts until after the next election, how many times do you have to send Grant Shapps out to do the early morning media round before everyone gives up trying to ask about it?

5. Nadhim has carelessly but not deliberately underpaid his taxes. How long can you wait before replacing him as minister without portfolio, and would anyone notice if you did?

6. A large Whitehall department is being broken up in a cabinet reshuffle caused by a departing party chairman. Calculate the cost to the taxpayer of new stationery and email addresses for all the civil servants involved. Do a cost benefit analysis of leaving things exactly as they are, then roll your eyes in disbelief.

Section 3: Student Finance

7. Nigel buys a train ticket from Thanet to Oxford. He is then no-platformed at a university and wants to reclaim his expenses. How many minutes of legal advice can he pay for before it becomes economically unviable to do so? Send your answer to the Office for Students, marked for the attention of the free speech tsar.

8. If the post work visa for international students is reduced to six months, how many PhDs must a non-UK student write to allow their spouse and children to enter the country long enough to watch an entire series of The Masked Singer? For extra points on your immigration application, make sure your PhD is in a STEM subject and that you are willing to pick fruit.

9. Nicola has a number cap on domestic student places. How many English students at £9,250 per head would a Scottish university have to recruit to ensure value-for-money for the purchase of a Zoom Pro account to continue to fill spaces on online courses months after the rest of the UK has gone back to teaching in person?

10. (i) Suella has banned noisy protests in the street, but Gillian has introduced a legal tort for free speech in universities. How many noisy protesters can the average university campus hold to ensure a safe space for anti-government demonstrations?

(ii) Express your answer in terms of the number of times per week an education minister would have to visit a university to facilitate that volume of noisy protest. Use Sam Gyimah as your baseline.

11. Kier and Rachel are designing a graduate tax. How many years can they put off announcing it before people start wondering whether they are just going to stick with the current fees and loans system?

12. In 2010, one year’s tuition fees on an undergraduate degree in England cost £9,000. Had fees risen with inflation, how much would a BA in sociology now cost? Give your answer as a percentage of the political capital that would have to have been expended to make that happen; use Cleggs as an International System of Units.

13. In 2023, if student maintenance loans continue to rise with a government-approved rate of inflation of 2 per cent, how mad is that? Express your answer as a sum of the total despair felt by students and parents during a historic cost-of-living crisis.

Section 4: International Finance

14. A target has been set for a country to spend 2.4 per cent of GDP on R&D by 2027. Produce a Venn diagram of everything that would need to be included to make that remotely possible without changing ONS methodology. Do not include the purchase of toasters or mobile phone top-ups. White lab coats and highlighter pens are permissible.

15. (i) If non-association with Horizon Europe has cost Oxford and Cambridge universities £130m per annum, how big a story is that for the broadsheet press?

(ii) How much bigger a story would it be if journalists at the Times and Telegraph had heard of the other 148 universities in the UK?

16. (i) George must spend £4.5bn earmarked for association with a cross-border R&D programme before the end of the Comprehensive Spending Review. What is his Plan B?

(ii) How much money will George be sending back to the Treasury as an underspend? Give your answer to the nearest billion pounds; alternatively, beat your head repeatedly against your desk in utter despair.

17. Rishi wants to do a deal with Ursula. How much money is he going to have to throw at the Democratic Unionist Party to get it through? Draw a pie chart to represent how big a slice is heading to East Belfast.

Section 5: Financial Engineering

18. Dominic has bought the wrong satellites at a cost of £400m to the public purse. They are then sold on to an EU rival. Calculate how low the bar of expectation has become for competent government in this country? Illustrate with examples from the sport of limbo dancing.

19. If universities have £40bn in reserves and staff ask for a pay rise of RPI plus 2 per cent, how long can you continue to spin the line that you are as poor as a church mouse who has just received a self-assessment tax bill on the day your spouse has run off with the rat next door taking all the cheese? Draw a diagram and use thought bubbles.

20. If the chair of the BBC introduces your cabinet secretary to a distant relation of yours willing to loan you a six-figure sum, how many times would you have to repeat the same after-dinner speech to repay the sum? Are you 100 per cent ding dang sure? Check your working. No need to provide evidence.

Section 6: Home Economics

21. If gold wallpaper costs £840 per roll, how much money can you save by buying a couple of tins of magnolia and a stencil kit from B&Q? Include your receipts and any honours offered as part of your calculation.

22. Lee thinks you can eat like a king for 30p per day. How many student food banks could be closed if only undergraduates knew how to budget properly?

23. If you must pay a fixed-penalty notice for every lockdown party you attended, how many police officers need to turn a blind eye so that you are only fined for being surprised by cake? Give your answer to two decimal places or the nearest Mr Kipling fondant fancy.

24. James was on a panel that has appointed the wife of Ben, a close political ally, to the directorship of a regulatory body. How many freedom of information requests are required before James is obliged to declare the background to this situation? 

25. If Boris earns £1m for four speaking engagements in 2023, and Rishi joins the after-dinner circuit in 2024, how much will Rishi be able to charge gullible American think tanks to talk about his experience of running a G7 economy into the ground? Express your answer in terms of the number of nurses who could be employed for that kind of money.

End of paper

Now turn over.

Now turn over again.

Congratulations, you have completed the Rishi Sunak U-Turn.

Degree-alternative apprenticeships in Trussonomics are available*

[*If your mother’s cousin knows the brother of the bloke in charge of the apprenticeship levy who happens to be a very good friend of Uncle Algernon.]

Terms of use: this is a free email for fun on a Friday afternoon. It should be shared among colleagues like the 2L container of milk that Susan put in the fridge and forgot to write her name on. Want to waste your Lifelong Loan Entitlement studying a Trussonomics module? Want to say hello? Email [email protected]

The post Exam paper appeared first on Research Professional News.

New project aims to make science facilities more hospitable to disabled researchers, says Katherine Deane

When people walk into a building, they assume they will be able to open doors, use stairs to get to the next level and go to the toilet when needed. Unfortunately, disabled people cannot make these assumptions in many buildings, even modern ones.

Buildings that house technical facilities such as laboratories are often even more inaccessible. This lack of access means there are too few disabled scientists in labs today. While about one in five working-age adults has a disability, only about 4 per cent of UK academics working in science, technology, engineering and maths are disabled.

To do something to redress that imbalance, I’m leading a project called Access All Areas in Labs, aimed at understanding the barriers that disabled scientists face and how labs can be made more accessible. The project’s first phase is an online survey, running until 24 February. If you are a disabled scientist who has worked in a laboratory, now or in the past, or you have an interest in making labs accessible, we would love to hear from you.

Overlooked diversity

As a wheelchair-using researcher in healthcare, I know that I design my research very differently. I make sure I have information sheets in accessible formats; I provide videos with British Sign Language interpreters to explain the project; I budget for higher travel costs for any wheelchair-using participants.

I know a lot about disability—enough to know that I always need lay advisers to make sure I tailor my projects to fit the patients I’m working with. All of this improves recruitment and retention of research participants, as well as the relevance and quality of my data. For much research, though, the lack of accommodations for this often-overlooked aspect of diversity has the opposite effect.

Scientists who are deaf, disabled or have long-term illnesses should be able to work in laboratory settings. Some solutions may be simple, such as a contrasting-colour fascia for a power socket that helps a visually impaired scientist find where to plug in their equipment, or a fire alarm that uses both audible and visual signals.

Some accommodations are a bit more complex, but address very basic needs. Scientists who have limited mobility and who need to use incontinence pads often have to compromise their safety and dignity by lying on a toilet floor to have their pads changed. The solution is an accessible toilet with a bench and hoist. Over a quarter of a million people in the UK need such facilities.

Our project aims to look at every aspect of laboratory science to find out how to adapt furniture, equipment, working practices, training, protocols and culture to ensure maximum accessibility. We also want to find out how to ensure consultations, conferences, publications and web pages are accessible.

The results will feed into a set of access guidelines covering all aspects of working in laboratory settings. We hope to persuade funding councils, universities, pharmaceutical companies and others to use these guidelines to enhance disability access.

Katherine Deane is access ambassador at the University of East Anglia, Norwich

A version of this article appeared in Research Fortnight

The post How can labs become more accessible? appeared first on Research Professional News.

Michael Hastings urges higher education managers and unions to swap strikes for a social pact

All social struggles have to be conducted within ethical parameters. These may differ from context to context and from sector to sector, but a concern with ethics has to be a defining feature of all such struggles, including collective industrial action. What then is the ethical parameter of a strike in a university?

The University and College Union and Unison have intensified their pay and pensions dispute with 18 days of strikes, and a pending assessment and marking boycott. Eighteen days of strike action will constitute more than 50 per cent of the teaching days in February and March—the last two months of this critical term of the academic year. Both will significantly affect student learning and progression. For some students, this disruption will be on top of the impact of the pandemic on face-to-face teaching and the overall learning experience.

Public institutions

Perhaps the first defining element of the ethical parameters in which universities operate is the fact that many of them are public; they are institutions that do not appropriate a surplus for private shareholders. The second defining element is the fact that they primarily service students and their learning and professional development. Both of these features must influence the conduct of unions and how they engage in industrial relations disputes.

Union leaders in universities should recognise that one cannot conduct oneself in the same manner as in disputes in private companies. The actions of academics and professional services staff at a university must never irreparably threaten the learning and progression of students. But 18 days of strike action and an assessment and marking boycott essentially do this. Both actions compromise the ultimate outcome of the academic year: students’ graduation or progression. In effect, they represent breaches of the institutional mandate of a university and violate the essential principle of academic integrity.

Strategic failure

Beyond principle (on which people may hold different views), from the perspective of the unions these actions are not strategic. Industrial action will not result in the outcomes they seek.

Take the example of Soas University of London, which has already communicated its unhappiness with the pension reforms to Universities UK (UUK). Our director, Adam Habib, has publicly argued that the decision of the Universities Superannuation Scheme trustees was not sensible given that the asset and liability assessments had been undertaken in the midst of a pandemic. This has been shared with the unions and our internal community on multiple occasions.

Industrial action at Soas will not change the outcome of decisions on the pension benefits because these were made by USS trustees, who are not at the receiving end of the action. This is especially the case when industrial action is dispersed and disaggregated, with significant participation in a few places and sparse turnouts in most institutions in the country. In these circumstances, industrial action at Soas will only hurt our students and damage our institution, without contributing to any of the systemic positive outcomes desired.

Retrenchment threat

Such action will also have an impact on staff. Significant increases in remuneration would increase institutional expenditure that needs to be met by increased income. As a socially just institution, Soas does not carry large financial reserves from which to pay for significant wage increases. Many other universities in the sector are in the same position. In the context of a freeze on fee increases—in real terms a reduction due to high inflation—much of the increased income needed would have to come from increases in student numbers.

Student numbers will only increase if prospective students perceive that the university is prioritising their interests. If this is not the case, as 18 days of strike action is likely to suggest, students will not come, income targets will not be achieved, and the resulting financial deficits will force institutions to consider staffing reductions. The net effect of imprudent industrial action and unaffordable salary increases may very well be the retrenchment of staff costs and shrinkage in all areas of academic activity—an outcome that no stakeholder in a university wants.

Scrutiny needed

It is sometimes said that it is not for others to influence the particular type of industrial action adopted by unions. This is nonsense. Universities are meant to subject ideas, behaviour and strategies to critical scrutiny. This should apply to union leadership decisions as much as it applies to university executive decisions. None among us should be spared. If we truly believe in the legitimacy of our actions, we must be willing to subject them to robust debate and defend them in the contest of ideas.

A social pact urgently needs to be built between universities and their unions. Such a social pact does not mean capitulating to the demands of unions or being forced to acquiesce to university executives. Rather it recognises that the policy architecture and business model of a university is determined by actors outside of the higher education sphere.

A fight between internal stakeholders within universities serves no one. Indeed, it financially imperils institutions, compromises the learning of their students and threatens the livelihoods of their staff. It is thus imperative that unions and vice-chancellors in the sector get together to identify necessary actions and reforms that become the basis of their joint advocacy to government. This is the only rational and, frankly, progressive approach to the challenges confronting higher education in the UK. It is a thought that needs to be pondered by both the leadership of UUK and the unions themselves.

Michael Hastings is chair of the Soas board of trustees and a member of the House of Lords

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Heidi Fraser-Krauss argues that ChatGPT is not as bad—or as good—as you think

Many column inches have been written about the artificial intelligence tool ChatGPT (the GPT stands, not very snappily, for Generative Pretrained Transformer) since its launch at the end of November. Some of the uses to which it has been put are hugely entertaining, my personal favourite being a train cancellation announcement in the style of the Book of Revelation.

However, there has also been a big focus on the challenge the tool poses to education and research. It is easy to see ChatGPT as a threat. It can produce grammatically correct, well-structured and highly plausible pieces of content, in seconds. This means it has obvious potential to be used to produce essays or outline research proposals and academic papers with minimal input and effort.

Break in routine

Despite this, I am convinced that ChatGPT and similar AI-generative tools hold great promise for educators to use them in positive ways to improve teaching, learning and research.

For example, ChatGPT can cut the time spent on routine tasks like writing reports: the tool is great at producing succinct summaries of arguments, it can be used to quickly create content and, properly prompted by the user, it can generate ideas and outlines for lessons. It also has enormous potential for writing and debugging computer code. In fact, new use cases are emerging all the time as more people experiment with it.

There is also the fact that the genie is out of the bottle and these tools are going to be a part of life. Microsoft is reportedly planning to incorporate ChatGPT into its Bing web search and Office products. It is not too simplistic to see ChatGPT as the next logical step on from spell checkers, grammar checkers and Google: they all save time and effort.

Assessment change

In my view, instead of banning its use like some schools in the US have, we should be working to integrate it into the pallet of tools that we can all call upon to make us more effective both at work and in the classroom. The kneejerk reaction is to revert to in-person exams. However, I think we should see this as an opportunity—one that began in the pandemic—for the sector to explore assessment techniques that measure learners’ critical thinking, problem-solving and reasoning skills rather than their essay-writing abilities.

On the downside, it has been amply evidenced that ChatGPT has limitations. For a start, it does not know everything and it is already out of date. It was trained, with human support, on a massive set of data, with the last update of those data being the end of 2021. As a result, while it can generate facts around past events and published data, it is not good on current affairs and it is definitely behind when it comes to new research.

It is also unreliable. ChatGPT can supply incorrect information and give detailed and credible answers to stupid questions such as “Can I teach my cat to code?”. A male colleague of mine mischievously described it as “mansplaining as a service”. Given that the data it was trained on come from humans, it can be inherently biased, and it is also incapable of reflecting human or ethical values. Finally, it cannot produce original ‘thoughts’.

Research citations

Discussions are ongoing in the academic community as to whether it is appropriate to use AI tools such as ChatGPT when authoring papers, and whether or how those contributions should be credited. Some say that if an AI tool has been used in any way to author a paper, its contribution should be acknowledged in either the methods or the acknowledgments section. Guidance on how to cite software used in research already exists; should we treat ChatGPT any differently?

Clearer guidance from the research and publishing communities that recognises the difference between the authorship of original research and the assembling of factual material will no doubt emerge, but this is not a trivial undertaking.

Ultimately, despite the hype, these tools cannot replace or produce original research. There are currently no generative AI models trained on the vast body of scientific research publications, which means that ChatGPT has limited “knowledge” of the most up-to-the-minute research data. Even with better knowledge, it would still be prone to providing false information, as we saw with Meta’s Galactica.

Finally, the impact of these tools will be different for each part of the sector, and we should embrace them as the next evolution in knowledge creation and management rather than a threat to research and education.

And, by the way, ChatGPT was not used to write this article!

Heidi Fraser-Krauss is chief executive of the higher education IT agency Jisc.

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Ivory Tower: a new Shakespearean tragicomedy is discovered through literary scholarship

1.1 A hall in Westminster

Rishi

Now is the winter of our discontent,

Made much worse by this MP from Yorkshire;

And all the schools in our catchment area

Like the university departments are closed.

Now are our Brexit woes still at the border;

Our interest rates going up further;

Our energy bills causing conniption;

Our weekly food basket filled with inflation.

Oven-ready deal hath unravelled at first touch

And now, instead of buccaneering on the high sea,

To undercut our European adversaries,

We limp from strike to strike

In a cost of living crisis.

But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks,

Who was top of math camp

And drinks of Coke for fun;

With a house in the Americas and a card of green;

I, who made Eat Out to Help Out;

Chancellor of furlough and Lord of Instagram;

Promoted, unfinished, sent before my time

Into the Treasury when the Saj resigned,

And so lame and unfashionable

That I do think the new Star Wars good;

Why, I, in this time of recession,

Have no delight to pass away the time,

As the first chancellor,

To obtain a fixéd-penalty notice for eating cake.

And therefore, since I cannot prove a chancellor,

To level-up this broken country,

I am determined to become prime minister

And hate the idle pleasures of government.

Plots have I laid, leaks to the press,

Briefings against cabinet colleagues,

To set the public and King Boris

In deadly hate the one against the other.

And since this earth affords no longer joy to me,

As a giveaway chancellor,

During a time of pestilence and press conferences,

I’ll make my heaven to dream upon the crown,

And while I live, to account this world but hell,

Until I have a photo opportunity

On the steps next door of number 10.

But yet I know not how to get the crown,

For many townhouse meetings stand between me and home;

And I, like one lost in a party of chaos,

Do tell the members that the money tree

Of Lady Liz is rent with thorns.

But they do cheer Elizabeth

And calleth me a maker of gloom and ‘no-votes Rishi’,

So the crown remains further off.

Although I am the favourite of MPs,

The members want tax cut and do call for growth.

I know ’tis mad and will crash the pound,

But I can smile, and lie while I smile,

And cry “content” to that which grieves my heart,

And wet my cheeks with artificial tears,

And say I hate the woke and small boats,

Just as much as the agéd members do.

I’ll be more Brexit than Farage,

I’ll go to wars for culture sooner than Nadine,

Speak more falsely than Rees-Mogg,

And, like a Boris, repeat-visit Ukraine.

I can teach colours to the chameleon,

Change shapes like Starmer for advantages,

And set the devious Mandelson to school.

Can I do this, and cannot get a crown?

Tut, were it farther off, I’ll pluck it down.

But hush, here comes the Lady Liz.

Prey good Truss, how goes the day?

2.1  Another hall in Westminster

Liz

’Tis like total wack, my Lord.

Once more we must debate with members

For them to choose who will wear the crown.

But I so vibe the rounds that I do pity you

And cannot find words to say sorry not-sorry.

For when I sit upon the throne

With the Quasi Lord on my right,

You will be cancelléd and we will lol.

Liz will slay the day and be adultin’ in number 10

While you will be nought but a non-dom.

Laters, Rishi, tempus fugit;

I will away, to dream of mini-budget.

[Exits]

Rishi

Were ever members in this humour wooed?

Were ever members in this humour won?

The Lady Liz speaks of tax and woke and growth,

Yet I too have designs just as good for freeports and extra maths.

I will tell the members what they want to hear

And thus I clothe my naked villainy

With old odd ends stolen from the TaxPayers’ Alliance;

And seem a saint, when most I play the devil.

But lo, here cometh the Lord Shapps and the Lady Keegan.

Hail fellows well met, what news from court?

Keegan

Why my Lord Rishi, no news but of the election of Elizabeth

Who is fawned upon by the members

But hath not the love of us who sit in the chamber.

Shapps

’Tis over Lord Rishi, Elizabeth hath the crown,

She is the second premier to sit this year,

You shall not be the third.

Rishi

So unwise so young, they say, do never last long.

Shapps

The Lady Liz hath offered me transport but no more.

What bounty wouldst thou bestow upon this head, were you king?

Rishi

Thy talents speak to more. Why I would give you business,

And with it domain over all of space and what the scholars call research.

Keegan

And what of me, my Lord? Wouldst thou find service for me?

Rishi

The Lady Keegan I would set to school and give her education.

Shapps

If such a day were to dawn, ’twould mean that we three

Would hold in our hands the fate of every university.

Keegan

And so, with the crown, Lord Rishi’s dream of maths for all will see the day.

Rishi

A course! A course! My kingdom for a course!

But your wit does you no credit, my Lady Keegan.

There be less chance that you two the universities sequester,

Than I meet my end in an NCP in Leicester.

Messenger

My Lords! The Lady Liz hath resigned.

Long live King Rishi, the third prime minister this year.

Shapps

And so am I business.

Keegan

And I to school.

Rishi

Extra maths for all! Hurrah!

[Exit pursued by a Boris]

Terms of use: this is a free email for fun on a Friday; it should be shared among colleagues like a bullying complaint against a secretary of state. Want to visit the Rishi III car park and freeport exhibition? Want to say hello? Email [email protected] 

The post Rishi the Third appeared first on Research Professional News.

Mark Carrigan calls for more strategic direction in the way universities use social media platforms

Three months ago, Elon Musk completed his takeover of Twitter to become its owner and CEO. Entire teams have since been cut from the company, leading to questions about Twitter’s capacity to counter misinformation or hate speech. It remains to be seen what the medium- and long-term implications will be for the security and stability of a platform that has long enjoyed a political influence far outweighing its relatively modest number of daily active users.

It might not be immediately obvious why this Silicon Valley issue matters for UK higher education. But that is part of a problem that all universities will need to address in the coming months. In a relatively short space of time, social media in general, and Twitter in particular, have become ubiquitous features of academic life. They are used for marketing at university, department and programme level, to raise awareness and support recruitment. They are used for internal communications by services and teams attempting to cut through the information overload that afflicts most universities. They are used for networking by centres, groups and initiatives to increase the visibility of the work they undertake. They are used for public engagement by research projects to reach external stakeholders and make an impact in wider society.

Perhaps most strikingly, they are used by individual academics, with Twitter coming to feel like a necessity for early career researchers afraid of missing out on potential benefits in a hyper-competitive job market.

These platforms are now deeply integrated into the communications infrastructure of the sector in ways that are informal and unplanned but no less integral for that. To see the current turmoil at Twitter as irrelevant to higher education reflects exactly the disregard for social media that has enabled this systemic reliance to develop in such a strikingly ill-thought-out way. The realistic prospect of platform death—a fate that has befallen many social media firms in the past—foregrounds the institutional problem that has been allowed to develop.

Knowledge production

Consider academic participation at conferences, seminars and workshops. These events serve a crucial role in facilitating knowledge production by enabling the building of connections and exchange of work in progress. Universities often expect their research-active staff to participate in these gatherings in order to contribute to the visibility of the institution and the possibility of collaborations leading to research grants and auditable publications.

These are the instrumental outcomes that most concern universities but there is a deeper value found for academics in the intellectual communities reproduced through these events. Participation in these communities contributes to the conditions that make scholarship possible through fomenting collaboration and sharing knowledge.

It is hard to quantify the role these events play in knowledge production because they tend to be far upstream of discernible outputs (with the exception, perhaps, of conference proceedings). But it is nonetheless possible to reliably trace at least some causal role played by scholarly events in the eventual genesis of a publication or project.

The same is true for the use of social media such as Twitter and LinkedIn by academics, even if the path from tweet to blog to peer-reviewed article is even less likely to show up in routine practices of research evaluation.

In part, this is because our evaluative practices tend to exclude the preliminary work that makes an eventual publication possible (in the process individualising knowledge production and contributing to epistemic injustice) but the widespread assumption that social media is a trivial feature of academic life with significance for knowledge exchange but little else means there is little appetite to try to draw out these connections within the sector.

Digital acceleration

During the pandemic it was much easier to see the significant role played by social media, supplemented by videoconferencing platforms such as Zoom and Teams, because these were the only means through which collaboration could proceed when academics were confined to their homes. There was a sense in which the entire sector underwent an accelerated process of digitalisation driven by necessity rather than slow shift in cultural norms—one that is far from being reversed given the ubiquity of online meetings and normalisation of hybrid working.

It is curious, therefore, that the role played by mass commercial social media platforms in the research infrastructure remains wilfully ignored, with the partial exception of its relationship to the impact agenda. It is from this perspective that the possible unravelling of Twitter under Elon Musk poses a challenge for the sector.

Academic Twitter has become a vital means through which academics disseminate information, publicise their work and lay the groundwork for collaboration. Its importance has only increased in a landscape in which meetings are as likely to take place online as they are in person, posing particular challenges for early career researchers who find it more difficult to network at online meetings.

Leadership needed

While there is a real potential for a more sustainable social infrastructure for scholarship through platforms such as Mastodon, it will require a careful approach that looks beyond the existing horizon of research communications. Unfortunately, the tendency to regard social media as a trivial feature of academic life means such leadership has long been lacking.

In its absence, academics have been driven into the arms of corporate platforms not fit for purpose and encouraged to think narrowly in terms of their individual careers rather than the communal purposes being served by digital engagement within the sector. Unless universities, research councils and learned societies begin to intervene in these spaces in a strategic manner, it is likely we will see this dynamic repeated. And if the critical mass of academics that coalesced on Twitter during the 2010s begins to disperse across a range of platforms, then the communications infrastructure of the sector will be left in an even worse place than it is at present.

Mark Carrigan is programme director for the MA Digital Technologies, Communication and Education (DTCE) and co-lead for the DTCE Research & Scholarship group at the University of Manchester. He is the author of Social Media for Academics, published by Sage and now in its second edition.

The post Twitter thread appeared first on Research Professional News.

Focus on research culture obscures wider and deeper problems, say Paul Manners and Rory Duncan

Discussions of research culture have been going on for as long as we can remember. Many hours and minds have been given to pondering how to make research careers, mainly in universities, more attractive, sustainable and stable, and how to enhance the link between research and wider society. There is even a government plan, the R&D People and Culture Strategy, that provides, it says, a “call to action” for research organisations to make improvements. 

Research culture certainly needs fixing. Toxic behaviours, precarity and exclusionary practices all demand attention. Besides the moral imperative, without a well-functioning system that attracts and develops diverse, talented people, research won’t be able to respond to the knowledge needs of society. 

But the issues gathered under the umbrella of research culture are better understood and tackled as symptoms of deeper, more pervasive structural problems. Unless we pause and reframe, we risk missing the wood for the trees.

Existential threats

Research plays a relatively minor role in the underpinning finances of higher education. For many universities, teaching accounts for approaching 90 per cent of revenue. And even for the research-intensives, it’s the biggest source of income. 

Solutions for research culture, then, must take account of the broader economic model on which universities are based, and this is in crisis. Income for teaching is fixed and dwindling in value as the cost of everything else inflates. Research is costing more, and funders’ contributions are not keeping pace. 

Universities respond to declining revenue by increasing student numbers if they can and by creating more efficient ways of delivering teaching. This risks introducing increased, and increasingly unsustainable, pressure on staff, one symptom of which is seemingly perennial industrial action.

If universities become unattractive and even more pressurised places to work, we’re in trouble, because the people we need won’t come. Research culture must be tackled in the context of these wider existential threats, or efforts to fix it will be fiddling while Rome burns.

The issue needs to be reframed: there is a crisis in professional culture right across higher education. This is not just about research, or even academic, culture—it’s about how we work collaboratively, with common purpose, to build and share powerful knowledge, and how we value expertise inside and outside universities. 

This is also an existential crisis about the knowledge needs of a rapidly shifting society and culture. We in universities have to challenge ourselves about whether our paradigms of knowledge production, in silos of research, knowledge exchange and teaching, are adequate for the wider needs of society. We must stop privileging academic expertise over the many other forms of professional and lived expertise needed to build and share knowledge effectively.

This is also a human-scale problem. Universities are at heart about learning—and this requires respect for and empathy with people’s cultural and emotional identities. It’s welcome that the research culture debate has brought this into focus.

Holistic frame 

A helpful first step could be to shift the language. ‘Culture’ is a nebulous term at best; focusing on ‘environment’ instead would make the issue tangible and tractable. Similarly, ending the fixation on research and starting to think about how to build learning environments fit for the 21st century, able to deliver on universities’ promises to make the world a better place, would give a more holistic frame to coordinate efforts. 

There are already wonderful examples of people developing new ways of organising and connecting learning and research to power each other, and of governance arrangements that allow inclusive, trustful decision-making that gives collaborators power and influence. 

There are places where fluid employment practices enable people, skills, cultures and ideas to be mobile, and where undergraduates are empowered as learning champions. Some faculties are experimenting with new ways of creative commissioning of projects and embracing new design practices.

Universities can also learn from other sectors that have navigated threats such as underfunding, shifting operating environments, changing user needs, obsolete and restrictive operating models and bureaucracy. Broadcasting, the cultural sector, charities and many businesses have implemented a level of transformation that, compared with higher education, is breathtaking.

So yes, let’s worry about research culture. But let’s not lose the plot. 

Paul Manners is co-director of the National Coordinating Centre for Public Engagement. Rory Duncan is pro vice-chancellor for research and innovation at Sheffield Hallam University.

This article also appeared in Research Fortnight and a version appeared in Research Europe

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Authorship records bring sobering evidence to debate over goals and approaches, says Gali Halevi

Efforts to increase diversity in research still meet resistance. Some academics argue that considering factors such as ethnicity and gender in hiring and promotion decisions, making efforts to attract under-represented groups to educational programmes, and implementing mandatory diversity statements and policies all introduce politics into decisions that should be solely based on intellectual excellence. 

In 2020, an essay published in the chemistry journal Angewandte Chemie argued that, since the introduction of diversity training, a “candidate’s inclusion in one of the preferred social groups may override his or her qualifications”. It caused an outcry, and has been deleted. Those who support such initiatives believe that politics is already present, that it is essential to redress past inequalities, and that making research more diverse and inclusive will improve its performance.

Policies on conferences, which are crucial to form social networks and collaborations but can also be cliquey, are a particular flashpoint. A recent article in Inside Higher Education looked at this issue in the US mathematical community. It implied that disagreements around messaging and policies on equity, diversity and inclusion—and especially around official statements and action on these topics—had been a factor in ending the agreement between America’s two biggest professional bodies for mathematicians, the American Mathematical Society (AMS) and the Mathematical Association of America (MAA) to organise the Joint Mathematics Meeting, the world’s largest maths conference. 

Mathematical fallout

The AMS, which focuses on mathematical research, is seen as less in favour of mandatory policies—in 2019, an AMS vice-president wrote an article arguing against them—while the MAA, which focuses on mathematical teaching, is in favour. 

As evidence of inequality and bias continues to emerge, bibliographic data can add another layer of evidence to this debate. Scholarly journals have only recently begun collecting diversity data on their authors— an initiative covering 50 publishers and 15,000 journals launched last year. Some countries, such as Germany, have restrictions on collecting such data. But, even when author ethnicity is not known, it can be inferred by comparing bibliographic data with other sources.

By comparing the ethnicity that people report to the US census, for example, with last names, we can work out the proportion of people with a particular name identifying in different ethnic groups. This fraction can then be applied to authorship data to estimate the make-up of different fields.

In a report published last year, the Institute for Scientific Information used this method to analyse publications by US-based authors in several scientific fields, including mathematics, between 2010 and 2020. Depending on the field, we were able to match 75-80 per cent of author names to census data. 

The mathematics dataset contained 48,080 publications and 17,909 unique names. For accuracy, we only analysed papers with solely US authors. 

No change in ethnic diversity

The data show clearly that ethnic diversity in mathematical research has hardly changed in the past decade. There has been a slow increase in authors of Asian and Pacific origin, but other groups are showing stagnation and low rates of participation in mathematical research. 

White mathematicians make up the largest group, estimated at 47 per cent of authors in the field, followed by authors identifying as Asian or Pacific Islander, the proportion of whom rose from 15 to 19 per cent over the decade. 

Black and Hispanic authors are severely under-represented in US mathematics. Respectively, these groups make up 12 and 16 per cent of the US population, but they account for just 4.6 per cent and 3.8 per cent of authorship in mathematics research, a figure that remained static through the decade. The proportion of Native American or Alaska Native authors, at 0.28 per cent, is much lower than this group’s 1 per cent share of the population. 

Debate around policies and statements is legitimate. But the data, in mathematics and in other fields, make a strong case for recognising the lack of diversity and creating opportunities for participation by under-represented groups. 

Diversity is not just a question of equity and social justice, important as these are. It has been shown to lead to accelerated innovation and improved decision-making. Whether through education, mentorships, training or creating advancement opportunities, all academic disciplines should be working to become more diverse and inclusive, to ensure that they produce impactful research. 

Gali Halevi is the director of the Institute for Scientific Information. Research Professional News is an editorially independent part of Clarivate, ISI’s owner

This article also appeared in Research Fortnight

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Disarray in government will make it harder for research to deliver benefits, says John Whitfield

When Frank Lampard was sacked as manager of Everton football club last week, one of the pundits’ talking points was how having six permanent managers in as many years had left the club lacking cohesion and direction. What chance did the latest boss have, when he was working with a ragbag of players chosen by half a dozen predecessors?

Other institutions hoping to recapture a successful past also find themselves mired in short-termism and acrimony early in the year.

Faced with poll numbers promising relegation, Tory MPs charged Rishi Sunak with getting a tune out of a mix of policies handed down from Margaret Thatcher, David Cameron—or rather, George Osborne—Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, each with its advocates and opponents among his MPs. Small wonder Sunak gives little sense of what he wants from his government beyond its continuation.

Against this unpromising backdrop, core R&D policy has so far fared pretty well. A ruling party that has shown little respect for arm’s length bodies, a penchant for giving cash to its supporters and an urge to reduce red tape might be expected to change UK Research and Innovation or the Research Excellence Framework in ways that left researchers pining for what they used to moan about. 

But while UKRI does not look like a happy ship, there seems little appetite to do anything drastic to it. Similarly, no one in government is taking aim at the REF. Science minister George Freeman deserves credit for keeping some good policies on track—treating, for example, the Office for National Statistics’ upward revision of UK R&D intensity as a reason to aim higher rather than go home. It seems likely he has also been keeping some bad ones at bay behind closed doors, too. 

Less than rosy outlook

In just the past few weeks, however, there has been plenty of evidence that if you look a little further out, where R&D is supposed to interact with the wider world, things are less rosy. January’s joint call by university mission groups for a parliamentary investigation into the Office for Students was an unusually blunt and public expression of disquiet that promises interesting times ahead for higher education. Home secretary Suella Braverman continues to give the impression that if she can’t stop people crossing the Channel in small boats, repelling the international students who keep universities solvent is the next best thing. 

Levelling up and its near—albeit semi-mythical—relative, the industrial strategy, are equally underpowered and incoherent. Eyebrows must have been raised in universities at the protests from local government over the inefficiency and indignity of having to submit competitive bids to win a share of a limited pot of funding. Perhaps instead councils could be judged on what they’ve achieved in the past seven years and funded accordingly? 

On the industrial side, battery manufacturer Britishvolt, which might have given the north-east a boost, has gone into administration. Except some of it might be rescued by an Australian company. The Oxford-Cambridge arc, which was going to be the UK’s Silicon Valley, is back on the agenda after being ditched in 2017 because it looked like giving the southeast too much of a boost. Except it involves building a train line, which feels optimistic, and last Friday Chancellor Jeremy Hunt said the whole country is going to be the next Silicon Valley.

And health policy is the mess to end them all. Last week’s report from the House of Lords Science and Technology committee pointed out that the demands of patient care are crowding out research and innovation in the NHS, and university medicine and the pipeline of clinical researchers are under threat. 

This might seem like a worry for another day, to be parked outside A&E at the end of a queue of ambulances. But better integrating research is one way to prevent the NHS becoming a provider of last resort in permanent crisis mode. 

The sense of wasting the future is painful, both in terms of lives and health—research-active hospitals have better patient outcomes—and of what a research-enabled NHS might contribute to the UK’s economy and society.

Labour’s shadow health secretary Wes Streeting would do well to add research and innovation to his emerging agenda for reforming the NHS.

Look back more than a couple of weeks, and, despite Hunt’s warm words you can find evidence of a similar lack of cohesion in policy on energy and climate, education and skills, or business investment. The research community would do well to use its position of relative security to engage with these issues, if it wants to turn increased funding into the benefits that policymakers expect. Otherwise, problems that seem remote could soon be spilling over its borders. 

John Whitfield is opinion editor of Research Fortnight

This article also appeared in Research Fortnight

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Back page gossip from the 1 February issue of Research Fortnight

Playing away

Saturday 21 January saw Scottish Premiership side and one-time Uefa Cup finalists Dundee United host Lowland League University of Stirling in the fourth round of the Scottish Cup. 

Stirling were the first university side to make it to this stage of the competition for 50 years. They earned their place by beating the mighty Albion Rovers 1-0 in the previous round, the wee Rovers having knocked out the University of Glasgow as part of their own cup run.

The Stirling team is entirely made up of students registered on the university’s scholarship programme—all must undertake a degree or other qualification like the rest of the student intake. 

Dundee United played in a Europa Conference League qualifier this season, and their side contained some famous faces including former Scotland and Premier League striker Steven Fletcher and Aziz Behich, who starred for Australia at the Qatar World Cup.

Stirling are no mugs and picked up their third British Universities and Colleges Sport Premier North title the week before, beating Durham and pipping Newcastle and Nottingham to the silverware. 

The student side did well to frustrate their professional opponents and the home fans until United scored their opener on the stroke of half-time. In the end, they went down 3-0 to the Scottish Premiership side.

The match was given added piquancy by Douglas Ross, leader of the Conservative Party in Scotland—the one who flip-flopped endlessly over his support for Boris Johnson—officiating as assistant referee. In the end, he took much more of a slating than the University of Stirling.

When the final whistle blew, the Stirling team took the applause of the travelling support—who waved flags provided at the turnstiles by the university—while the clearly relieved United fans offered a chant implying that time spent in the ivory tower was not solely restricted to mental masturbation.

The United fans might improve their vocabulary by responding to the recruitment advert that the University of Stirling took out in the matchday programme—you should have heard what they said about Ross.

Stirling head coach Chris Geddes told BBC Sport that the team was “disappointed to lose. Hopefully it’s an education for our guys.”

Artificial intelligence

There has been much talk about the possible implications for universities of rapidly evolving artificial intelligence platforms such as ChatGPT, which could allow students to exploit the technology to write essays.

One academic at Soas, University of London, has a plan to turn the tables.

Global development professor Michael Jennings and his colleagues hope to fight bots with bots. Should a student submit an AI-generated essay, they will receive generic marker feedback also from the bot.

In test runs, the results from ChatGPT have been all too plausible. Jennings commented: “Of course, the next challenge is to see how it handles writing a Research Excellence Framework submission.”

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UK Shared Prosperity Fund is failing research—and regional growth

Dozens of research projects face closure and a thousand jobs are at risk—and this is just the picture in Wales.

Welcome to the current phase of the levelling up agenda.

The UK government continues to underscore its desire to help left-behind regions of the country, explicitly highlighting the potential of universities to help develop regional economies. But after four years of warnings, the inadequacy of the UK’s replacement for the lost EU structural funds—a major source of investment for research projects—is about to hit home (see cover). The places most in need of levelling up are bearing the brunt of this shortsightedness.

Research leaders have been sounding the alarm over the impact of the loss of EU structural funds since the aftermath of the Brexit vote. For nearly as long, they have been raising concerns over the ability of the government’s proposed replacement, the UK Shared Prosperity Fund, to plug the gap in research investment.

The need to pay greater attention to the direction the UKSPF was headed in was highlighted in the Smith-Reid review of international research collaboration after Brexit, which hit ministers’ desks way back in 2019. 

And yet, while the government continues to claim that the £2.6 billion UKSPF is a “real-terms match” for the lost investment, projects are now just weeks away from standing down their teams as their last tranche of EU funding comes to an end. And without urgent action from government, the situation looks set to get a lot worse. 

As we explore on P10, the problems with the UKSPF are partly a result of its delayed set-up and a lack of clarity over the amount of funding it will provide for research. Investment plans for 2022-25 were only signed off in December, leaving just a few months to make awards before the end of this financial year. This has left many research projects—those which would in other circumstances have applied for EU follow-on funding to continue their work—out in the cold, their teams having hoped for the best from the scheme and been landed with the worst. 

This is because the problem runs into the structure of UKSPF. With money being channelled through local authorities, pockets of available funding are much smaller than under the structural funds. Large-scale research projects now face the prospect of dealing with multiple authorities to secure investment, many of which are unfamiliar with research funding—and research leaders are deeply concerned about the likelihood of major research projects securing investment in future.

Allowing large-scale R&D programmes to crash out in areas it is apparently trying to boost runs counter to the government’s promises. Vice-chancellors are now calling on ministers to urgently provide transitional funding for those projects at risk. That would be a welcome start, but the suitability of the UKSPF in its current form for funding research also needs to be urgently reconsidered.

The cliff edge facing these projects, in Wales and elsewhere, shows a clear broken link between the government’s much-touted big-picture support for science and regional investment and the reality on the ground. It’s in no one’s interest to leave this situation hanging.

A version of this article also appeared in Research Fortnight

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Martha Longdon suggests lessons to learn from the Office for Students’ first five years

At the end of this month, my time in student leadership and my four-year term as the Office for Students’ board member for student experience come to an end. I’ve been involved in student leadership in some form for most of the past decade—and having kick-started my higher education career in 2017 when I was a sabbatical officer, the student experience has long been at the heart of my work.

As chair of the OfS student panel since joining the regulator in 2018, I have worked with more than 35 panel members, each with a wealth of lived experience, advising the OfS on policy development across the breadth of its regulatory work.

Supported by colleagues in the student engagement team, we have reviewed and refined the panel’s mechanics and culture, strengthened its relationship with OfS staff teams and advanced its activity from simply revising final policy drafts to becoming a critical friend throughout the policy development process.

One of the joys of this role has been introducing some staff and board members to student engagement for the first time. There is always something new to learn from the panel, and we are never short of colleagues keen to consult us on the next stage of a project.

Student interest

The panel has shaped the OfS’s understanding of the complex issues faced by students, including their different perspectives on value for money, the increasing cost of living, blended learning and the experience of studying during a global pandemic. The panel has informed OfS organisational strategy and its approach to student engagement, providing insights on how to implement regulation in the interests of students.

Recently, it has shaped policy on access and participation and the Teaching Excellence Framework, both of which will now include a student submission, and the panellists’ lived experiences have informed what support and resources the OfS will deliver to promote meaningful student involvement in this process.

This will help to ensure that these student submissions will not be stand-alone exercises but starting points for providers and students to work together to deliver excellence in quality of provision and equality of access.

Changing faces

Over the past two years, the OfS has seen two chairs, two chief executives and two directors for fair access and participation. Externally, too, the political landscape has shifted since the OfS was launched, with six different education secretaries, seven ministers for higher education and four prime ministers (three in the last few months of 2022 alone).

Not only will this influence the direction of the sector and the OfS’s work, it has also shifted the location of the debate around higher education policy. While students and providers have been notably absent from key announcements and discussions in Westminster, conversations about freedom of speech, cost of living and the recent strikes have permeated through the media into robust conversations at dinner tables and, in recent weeks, on heavily delayed trains.

Registration to regulation

Alongside this, the OfS is still undergoing a transformation of its own, from its early, substantial role of registering higher education providers in England to the equally complex matter now of ongoing regulation.

As it turns five in 2023, I have no doubt that colleagues will also be reflecting on the lessons learned. It’s clear that it still has work to do to win over hearts and minds in a sector still nostalgic for the days of the Higher Education Funding Council for England, and there are several upcoming areas of work that will need to be underpinned by stronger communication and collaboration with providers.

Strengthening regulation around harassment and sexual misconduct is one example. It is a vital piece of work to increase student safety and provide clear and accessible routes for students to report incidents and receive appropriate support. A recently published evaluation, conducted by Sums Consulting, demonstrates some progress in this area, but more still needs to be done.

In December, the student panel met OfS colleagues to advise on this work. These conversations highlight the complexity of regulating issues that exist broadly within society but that manifest in unique ways in higher education institutions. The work requires decisiveness and sensitivity, but insights can be brought to the process from existing work on mental health, Covid recovery and social mobility. Strengthening consultation here will help to address future challenges that arise as students’ lives in and beyond universities increasingly overlap.

Questions of quality

New OfS investigations into quality also offer the opportunity for a renewed commitment to involving students. Over the past five years, the Teaching Excellence Framework has set an excellent example of how to deliver this in a tangible and meaningful way.

The review of blended learning and regulation provided further insights into ways in which students may interact with providers. Translating this good practice into new ways of working could help the OfS to embed credible, inclusive and proportionate student engagement in regulating quality.

And, crucially, although freedom of speech legislation is yet to be finalised, it is likely that it will bring about a significant shift in interactions between the OfS and students’ unions, which the OfS will regulate for the first time, albeit in a limited and specific way.

Positive relationships between the two will be vital to the regulator’s student engagement work and how it supports student unions to collaborate effectively with providers and hold them to account in the student interest. Navigating this new territory will be challenging for those implementing the legislation at sector and provider level.

It’s unclear how far student voices have influenced the design of the new legislation, but environments where ideas can be robustly discussed and debated, without excluding students from actively engaging with all aspects of their student experience, will require open and thoughtful dialogue and respect and generosity of spirit from all involved.

Martha Longdon is the outgoing chair of the OfS student panel and writes here in a personal capacity.

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Ivory Tower: a new year and a return of our fly-on-the-wall documentary

Narrator: Royal Dalton University, formerly the North by North West Midlands Institute and Technical College, is one of Britain’s busiest higher education providers. The staff and students are back for another term, but all is not well in the world of universities, with soaring costs, government indifference and looming strikes. Vice-chancellor Sir Malcolm Baxter has a lot to think about.

Sir Malcolm: I guess we’ve all been looking at our pensions. It’s the strike thing of course. Now, no one round here is a member of the Universities Superannuation Scheme. Well, no one except me, the deputy vice-chancellor who came from Sheffield, and the director of finance, who knows a good thing when he sees one. Everyone else at Royal Dalton is part of the North by North West Midlands Mutual Local Government, Teachers, Environmental Health Inspectors and Road Sweepers Scheme that we inherited when we became a university. That’s everyone except those employed in our wholly owned subsidiaries, like our budget campus Dalton Lite, our services company Clean Dalton, and some other peripheral things that we spun out, like the library.

Those valued employees have their own pension arrangements. I don’t mean we provide another pension scheme with reduced employer contributions and smaller employee benefits, we wouldn’t do that. I mean they actually have to go and make their own pension arrangements. I believe the head librarian has two properties nearby that she rents out to students. I think the head of media studies at Dalton Lite keeps cash in a shoebox under the bed. Well, you might as well, have you seen the state of the economy out there?

Energy at Royal Dalton has gone through the roof – quite literally in the case of some of the halls of residence. We really should look into some insulation for those buildings. I got an email the other day in the senior management suggestions box, which said the only insulation going on round here during the energy price shock was my salary. I’m not sure what they meant.

But we’ve launched a sustainability drive in the university, Save Dalton. It mostly involves the head of estates going from classroom to classroom switching off the lights. There’s been some kick back from the staff, so I’ve told him he has to wait until people have left the room, but he says he’s just passionate about sustainability. He says that if we switched off all the lights in our rooms for just one day then we would save enough energy to power a city the size of Moscow. I’m not sure that’s the best comparison.

I’m as worried about the cost of living as the next man. It costs an absolute fortune to fill up the university Daimler with diesel, so no more five-minute drives to the town hall for meetings with councillors. Instead, I’m told we are going to buy an electric vehicle. It’s something called a Skoota. It’s not a brand I’m familiar with but I’m sure it will get me from A to B. I said to the senior management team the other day, “Do I look like Elon Musk?” They didn’t say anything—maybe they didn’t get the reference. Of course, sustainability is no laughing matter, and neither is university leadership. It’s a lonely job. Did I say, my pension pot was full?

Narrator: Elsewhere at Royal Dalton, the staff are revolting. There has just been a meeting of the University and College Union branch, in which all four attendees have backed industrial action. Union rep Brenda Harding is up for the fight.

Brenda: It’s time these fat cat university managers heard us roar. I know we have been on strike for the best part of five years now, without much progress to be honest, but this is our moment. We will bring this university to a standstill. I admit that union membership is not that big, or engaged, at Royal Dalton but there are eight entrance points to the campus, so if one of us stands at each gate handing out leaflets, then we can cause a real headache for the management.

I’m pretty sure that one person and their dog constitutes an official picket line, especially if they are wearing a hi-vis jacket and a pink beanie—not sure what the staff member will be wearing. Our members are fully behind the strategy of 18 days of action. Well, mostly behind it. Professor Galbraith in geography says he has a field trip in Italy at that time and he can’t get out of it now. While the staff in cultural studies—who are usually up for any kind of strike action—say they’ll be in sympathy by going to work as normal and sympathising with those of us on the picket line.

But I’ve been overwhelmed by the response of our younger members. When I told a meeting of the graduate teaching assistants that they would be losing 18 days’ pay in February and March as part of our glorious push, some of them actually cried with joy. I know we are asking a lot of our members. I did question the strategy myself.

I mean, why will we be working on a Friday and a Monday but not on a Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday? On Friday I like to go for a swim, and on Mondays… well, it’s a Monday isn’t it. Someone said to me the other day, “Why are you fighting four fights? It’s hard enough to win one. Can’t you just pick one, for God’s sake?” So, I said, “Vice-chancellor, that’s a good point. Have you factored into the workload model that I have to fight four fights instead of just one?” That shut him up.

Narrator: Royal Dalton’s students are also feeling the pinch at this time. Student Union president Fathima Iqbal has set up a food bank for the university. It comes at a time when the student representative body has a lot on its plate.

Fathima: It’s not something you ever believed could happen—a food bank in a university. You have no idea of the impact it’s had. First, there were the economics lecturers who came along and said they didn’t have anything to donate but would be happy to give a talk on the circular economy while students picked up their food parcels.

Then there were the senior managers who came down and said that this was embarrassing. But fair play to Sir Malcolm – he said all the own-brand pasta and budget tins showed the university in a bad light, so he went and did a big shop in Waitrose and now we’ve got some quality produce.

Then there were the free speech warriors who complained about us working out of the Colin West building. Apparently, some people were calling it the West Bank. I’m not sure who should have been offended more. But our students really appreciate the resource and it’s a big hit on social media.

Whenever Sir Malcolm does a run to Waitrose, a post goes up on Instagram and the queues start to form. I think there’s even a WhatsApp group where you can make requests. We pass them on to the VC’s office and he does his best, occasionally substituting items. But I’m not sure if any of us know the best way to cook quail’s eggs.

Terms of use: this is an email for fun on a Friday. It should be passed from one location to another like a careless offshore deposit. Want to witness a Royal Dalton open day? Want to say hello? Email [email protected]

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Chris Millward suggests ways to unblock the university superhighway

Thanks to rail strikes, many of us have spent more time than expected on the roads over the past few weeks, which may find echoes in the coming year for higher education. Working in a 21st-century university can feel much like driving around a complex road network, requiring navigation between different disciplines, modes and levels of study and between partners locally, nationally and internationally—plus frequent lane changes between education and research, indeed often straddling the two.

In England, the expansion of higher education has increased its size, diversity and complexity. Universities and government met the increase in tuition fees 10 years ago—and the removal of student number controls that followed—with a mix of anticipation and trepidation. University leaders looked forward to greater freedom and ministers to the rigour of the open market, but both were also concerned that volatility could threaten some universities’ sustainability.

These concerns have largely proved unfounded. English higher education has continued to grow in response to the unconstrained ambitions of students and their families, together with the government’s prioritisation of investment in R&D. Universities have, for the most part, shown an ability to navigate a more complex environment, albeit within a new regulatory landscape designed to reassure students and taxpayers.

Keeping things moving

The point of the regulator established by the Higher Education and Research Act 2017 was not to reduce or consolidate the flow of higher education traffic but to keep it flowing safely. In the words of the Office for Students’ first regulatory framework: “No amount of central direction could guarantee the future success of the higher education sector.” But this could be facilitated by “creating the conditions that enable the sector to deliver an excellent education to all”.

In a similar vein, the 2019 Augar review intended to make the system more financially sustainable while broadening opportunities for progression into and through higher education. This would be achieved by investing beyond the most congested highways to improve the accessibility and quality of neglected routes, underpinned by a single loan entitlement enabling learners to move through different types and levels of study at variable speeds throughout life.

When it ultimately published its response to the review, the government took a different approach. It proposed entry controls, rather than incentives, which would direct traffic away from higher education. Further education and apprenticeships would be positioned separately from universities, rather than connected to and enabling progression through them as part of the same system.

This would take us in the opposite direction to many other countries, which are integrating their technical and academic routes in response to demand from students and employers.

Roadblocks

It remains unclear whether entry controls will ultimately be implemented. But the past year has been one of increasing obstacles in higher education, with proposals to end courses that fail to lead to higher earnings, to regulate campus free speech and to apply restrictions to international students and international collaboration. Inflation has meanwhile eroded student and university incomes.

Universities were never likely to be as free as they expected 10 years ago, nor ministers as willing to rely on the market. A permanent tension exists between the public character of higher education and the desire to promote market forces, which leads governments to intervene more than anyone wants.

This appears, though, to have been compounded in England by the government’s concerns about the cost of the system, together with its changing attitude towards markets and universities through the process of the UK’s departure from the EU.

Boris Johnson’s government viewed the referendum on Brexit as a rebellion against open labour markets and saw intervention as a way of making Brexit work. Universities rely on the borderless flow of people and knowledge and are populated by staff and students who have benefited from this. Many of them now feel that every route requires brakes to be applied in anticipation of a stop line.

New avenues

If this sounds a grim way to start the year, it does not need to be. The new government appears to be more focused on pragmatism than ideology—and while financial room for manoeuvre is limited, avenues remain available.

The government could, for example, unblock some lanes of traffic by reducing regulation of activities it wants to encourage, such as higher-level and degree apprenticeships, shorter-cycle learning and courses that develop advanced technical and research capabilities.

This could be particularly focused on places where it wants to drive growth by attracting investment through aligning skills and innovation around a university presence.

A precedent also exists for enabling an inflationary fee increase for universities and colleges that can demonstrate excellence beyond a threshold.

Measures such as these could release some of the current pressures on the system while helping the government to achieve its goals.

Give way

Beyond 2023, there is scope to nurture a different relationship between government and universities, shifting from hard stop lines to the continual judgment-based yield and flow that we all experience as we progress through a roundabout.

This would involve close engagement between universities, colleges, local agencies, public services and industry sector bodies, and the alignment of higher education with other areas of policy and investment.

It would develop the local ecosystems of skills and innovation necessary to provide coherent pathways for learners between further education, apprenticeships and higher education throughout life, and to build not just the supply of highly skilled people but also demand for them.

This model is increasingly being pursued in the UK nations beyond England and could be empowered by the greater devolution to local areas promised by both the current government and the Labour opposition. By combining local insights with national oversight, it could truly keep the traffic flowing positively and safely.

Chris Millward is professor of practice in education policy at the University of Birmingham. He was previously director for fair access and participation at the Office for Students and director of policy at the Higher Education Funding Council for England.

A version of this article appeared in Research Fortnight

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Ivory Tower: the elite of higher education and research are up a mountain

Grant Shapps (secretary of state for vibes)

I’ve always been a big fan of Doctor Who and when I heard that Russell T Davies would be bringing back the creator of the daleks, I jumped at the opportunity to spend time here. What? That’s Davros? Then who were those alien types we had dinner with last night? That was the team from Universities UK… Really? Look, I’m here to seek investment for GB PLC, no not the TV station. 

I want to make sure people know that the UK is the best place to invest in for R&D and tech. We’ve got some of the best universities in the world, and we’ve also got… hold on, I know this one… silicon roundabout. Is it really made of silicon? That’s cool. I guess if you crash into it, you just bounce back. Pity we hadn’t dropped the economy on it. Look, got to go, George Clooney is signing photographs in the atrium if you pay five euros for world hunger. Promised I’d get one for Rishi.

Rishi Sunak (prime minister and Apprentice contestant)

Obviously, I am not in Davos. That would be a terrible look. No, the family and I go to Klosters like the really, really rich people do.

Ottoline Leyser (chief executive UKRI and visiting professor Ecole du Ski Francais)

I’ve been hurtling down some seriously dangerous runs, swerving to avoid crashes and worried that an avalanche is coming. But enough about dealing with the Prospect union and the forthcoming strikes at UKRI. 

I’m here to beat the drum for UK Research and Innovation but sadly this place is so posh there is a noise curfew at 9pm so I’m reduced to whispering about UK Research and Innovation. A Swiss police officer stopped me in the street and asked me what I was doing, so I explained, and they said, “Well if I were attached to British higher education I wouldn’t shout about it either”.

Mariya Gabriel (EU commissioner for research, innovation, and polite refusals)

It’s wonderful to be back in Davos where the investors in the science and technology of tomorrow are to be found with their heads in the clouds, literally. Last night I met your Sir Richard Branson and we talked about his attempt to launch satellites from Cornwall. I was shocked when he told me they had all crashed. He later offered me a ride down the mountain in his Virgin helicopter. I told him I was alright and that I would take the chair lift with Michel Barnier.

Vivienne Stern (chief executive and head of diplomacy at UUK)

There is a lot of love in the room for UK universities here. One fund manager asked me how much I wanted for Oxford and Cambridge. I said the universities are not for sale. He said he meant the cities, before speeding off on his skidoo. 

UUK has a stand in the conference atrium, between Bob Geldof’s Do They Know It’s Brexit stand and George Clooney signing photographs for a fiver. I thought that was just so cheap. So, I got two for the office and one for my wallet.

Jeremy Hunt (invisible chancellor of the exchequer)

I’m here because I am part of a cabal of lizard people who secretly run the global economy. Sorry, wasn’t supposed to say that bit out loud. I am an ordinary human being who drinks coffee and knows how inflation works. Apparently, it can be halved by just sitting quietly and doing nothing. I took the same approach to the number of votes I received in my leadership bids for the Conservative Party. 

I’m here to reassure people that Britain is going to be okay. It’s been through a tough spell these last 13 years, but it’s now out of bed and is having physio twice a week. It won’t ever be able to go running again and often feels wheezy just walking upstairs, but despite everything it can still enjoy a decent quality of life. Not one that any other country would want to have. We are thinking of asking Ireland to be our carer. Oh, look is that Claudia Schiffer?

Jo Grady (first citizen general secretary)

No way am I here to listen to what the financial elite have to say—if I wanted that I’d go to a meeting with the Russell Group. It just so happens that I’d booked a week’s holiday with Erna Low, and this was the secret hotel pick. 

Originally, I thought it would be a good opportunity to model my famous pink beanie in a winter wonderland setting for the union hardship fund brochure. Then I found out about the fondu and the chocolate and the cuckoo clocks. So I’ve been asked to bring a few things back. I was thinking of getting a Swiss army knife, but that’s mostly for the national executive committee.

Emmanuel Macron (president of France, lover not a fighter)

I was minding my own business in the atrium when a strange English man bounded up to me demanding I sign a picture of George Clooney and offering me five euros. I didn’t say no—five euros is five euros after all. What has happened to that country? It used to lead the world on international aid and global debt relief. 

Now you can’t get a train to Birmingham and a baguette costs a week’s wages—almost as much as in the centre of Paris. But I still look at their universities’ world rankings with envy and am doing my best to emulate them. That’s why everyone in France was on strike this week about their pensions.

Bill Galvin (chief executive Universities Superannuation Scheme, not long to go)

As the biggest private pension fund in the UK, with over £80bn of assets under management, we are always looking for sound investments. That’s why I’m here and definitely not thinking about buying a ski lodge when I retire from USS. 

So, we’ve decided to invest in Toblerone. Apparently, they are bringing out a new range of edible carafes for hot beverages. I’m going to take some samples back to the USS trustee and see if they really are as useless as a chocolate teapot.

George Freeman (man of science and captain of the innovation nation)

I’m here to see who is interested in plan B. It turns out the actual plan B is here. He’s a rapper apparently, who is part of a delegation of celebrities campaigning against global poverty. I introduced myself to him at a reception last night. He asked, “Are you with that Comic Relief?” I said, “Well I’m part of the government if that’s what you mean”.

Kier Starmer (Leader of the former Labour Party)

Let me be very clear, I am neither for the global financial elite nor against the global financial elite. I’ll make up my mind about that after the election. We are staying down the hill in an Ibis near the train station. We take very seriously the economic choices that face ordinary Britons. We are not paying for breakfast in the hotel. Rather, Rachel Reeves got a packet of LU biscuits from the Spar next door, and I brought a travel kettle. 

While I’m here I want to speak to business people and global media moguls about how I would like to move closer to Europe. Angela Rayner said that I should rent in the Isle of Wight, and she would look after things in London—not sure what she meant. While here, I’ve been so inspired by Greta Thunberg’s message on climate change. I’ll be thinking of nothing else when the 12 of us catch our RyanAir flight in Geneva. Oh, look is that Morgan Freeman?

Terms of use: this is a free email for fun on a Friday, it should be over shared with colleagues like that time you told them about how you like to keep your socks on in bed. Want to pre-order a commemorative 2022 USS valuation Toblerone teapot? Want to say hello? Email [email protected]

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The pandemic’s legacy of increased public attention demands that researchers communicate better, says Richard Horton

Three years ago this week, cases of a new respiratory disease were growing in China and starting to appear in other countries. Two years ago, the number of UK residents vaccinated against Covid-19 passed four million, as the global vaccine rollout gathered pace.

Looking at where the world is with Covid-19 now, we should still be thanking the researchers, scientists and healthcare professionals who made such incredible progress possible. The vaccines were an undoubted triumph for science. But not every outcome from the pandemic has been so positive.

Economist Impact, The Economist’s policy research outfit, supported by The Lancet’s publisher Elsevier, recently surveyed more than 3,100 scientific researchers globally. It found that although scientists had seen a welcome increase in public attention on science due to the pandemic, this awareness has not been matched by better understanding of the research process.

Public attention can also have negative effects: 32 per cent of those surveyed said that either they or a close colleague had experienced abuse after posting their research online. This has left researchers understandably nervous about using social media—just 18 per cent said they were confident communicating their research on platforms.

The learning curve has certainly been steep, with the pandemic thrusting scientists such as UK chief medical officer Chris Whitty and chief scientific adviser Patrick Vallance into the limelight almost overnight. Worldwide, scientists felt the pressure of greater public scrutiny, and are still feeling it.

A more public-facing role for scientists and researchers in society brings challenges. But it is also an opportunity to engage with the public, policymakers and the media in a constructive way, using various means of communication, with social media at its heart. The research community must learn from the past three years to prepare for the next health emergency.

One task is explaining scientific process. Those close to research know findings can change as understanding progresses; it’s one of the things that makes science so fascinating. Yet outside audiences rarely appreciate the iterative nature of science. The public often take what they read as fact, without necessarily recognising that findings are always provisional.

Such uncertainty can be hard to accept in the midst of a crisis. When the public was desperate for clarity at the height of the pandemic, the ‘greyness’ of some research evidence created friction. Changing scientific advice—on face masks, for example—generated public criticism, alarm and perhaps more mistrust of experts. 

The picture was further complicated by much of the new science appearing before peer review, in the interests of speed and because of public demand. Researchers were often dealing directly with the public, policymakers and the media. 

Researchers and their allies owe it to themselves to reverse mistrust and improve the public understanding of science. The public, media and policymakers need to be better informed about how the scientific and research process works.

Building public trust

A drive to encourage better understanding of the scientific process, and a renewed focus on and explanation of peer review and other quality-assurance methods, can help rebuild trust in science. Doing this effectively means wading through and tackling misinformation. 

Researchers need to feel confident about using social media to share research—and need support to improve their communication skills when engaging with the public and policymakers. As a scientific community, we must pour investment into building public trust in science, campaign to counter misinformation, enhance research literacy among the media, commission more research on science communication, make vigorous efforts to explain new research findings to a public audience, and prepare scientists for more public-facing roles. 

We face a worrying trend of scientific policy decisions, particularly those linked to health, becoming a badge of political identity. The debate around mask-wearing is a prime example. While we can’t, and shouldn’t, stop discussion around policy that affects our daily lives, a renewed commitment from policymakers to be ‘led by the science’ will help both to quash misinformation and to foster a respect for science that would benefit society hugely. 

The research community cannot rest on its laurels when it comes to the lessons we’ve learnt from Covid-19. There’s a bright future out there for us—but we must ensure we do more to connect and support researchers with the tools to navigate this
new landscape. 

Richard Horton is editor-in-chief of The Lancet, publisher of The Lancet Group and author of The Covid-19 Catastrophe: What’s gone wrong and how to stop it happening again (Polity)

This article also appeared in Research Fortnight and a version appeared in Research Europe

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Worsening ransomware threat demands an institution-wide response led from the top, says Henry Hughes

In the past few years, ransomware attacks have become the principal threat to the digital infrastructures and day-to-day business operations of UK education and research organisations. They accounted for at least 12 of the 16 major security incidents recorded in 2022, while there were 18 serious ransomware attacks across the sector in 2021 and 15 in 2020.

Last year, the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) called ransomware “the most acute threat that businesses and organisations in the UK face”. The market for attack tools evolves rapidly, and Russia’s cyberattacks against Ukraine and its allies have heightened the threat. 

On the positive side, Jisc’s 2022 survey on approaches to cyberattacks showed that colleges and universities have a good grasp of the threat landscape, including identifying ransomware as one of the top threats. Survey data also show that cybersecurity has generally improved across the sector. 

But universities are still cautious. Of the 62 that responded to the 2022 survey, only 10 gave themselves 8 or more out of 10 for cybersecurity. Most rated themselves 5 to 7.

Some institutions are better protected than others, and some think they are better protected than they are. What’s disheartening is that attacks typically exploit weaknesses that could be prevented or mitigated, such as insecure remote access, unpatched critical vulnerabilities or a lack of multifactor authentication. 

Cyberattacks are inevitable. Thorough preparation is key to minimising service disruption and downtime—prevention is less stressful, less disruptive and far less expensive than cure.

Choose how vulnerable you are 

NCSC chief executive Lindy Cameron has said that Ukraine’s efforts to counter Russian cyberattacks show that “the defender has significant agency. In many ways you can choose how vulnerable you can be to attacks.”

A basic plan is better than no plan, but detailed, regularly tested and refined incident response and disaster recovery plans are best of all. Those who rehearse regularly recover more quickly than those who do not. Organisations need to agree responsibilities in advance and conduct regular exercises to practise attack scenarios. This will help build the trust and confidence needed in a crisis.

Risk management is equally important. Where are the critical data—and who has responsibility and access? Is there regular vulnerability scanning and a procedure for dealing with identified weaknesses? 

Think of fire prevention: risk cannot be eliminated, but it’s normal to take all possible precautions. Fire safety risks are well understood and there are systematic approaches to addressing them. Cyber threats and risks are not so well understood but demand a similar level of preparedness. Otherwise, the response risks being like sending a fire engine to a building that’s already burned down.

Take responsibility for resilience

The increased threat is reflected in compliance regimes becoming more exacting. The UK government’s Cyber Essentials certification has been toughened to include cloud services and clarifications around bring-your-own-device policies, and the NCSC’s Cyber Assessment Framework will be adopted for government organisations.  

Future compliance frameworks are likely to give more attention to security breaches via third parties, such as through vulnerabilities in widely used software; one example is the 2020 hack of the SolarWinds network management platform. 

Such supply chain attacks are becoming more of a problem; their effects are complicated and preventing them is tricky. Most checks occur during procurement; ongoing testing is less common. Jisc is working with the Universities and Colleges Information Systems Association on a framework to help members choose suppliers.

Jisc has a checklist of 16 questions you need to ask to assess your cybersecurity, and we’ve just launched a campaign called Defend As One, to provide members with personalised instructions. Members can also join the cybersecurity community group and receive training.

We advocate an organisation-wide, strategic approach. For the safety of their data, systems and people, senior leaders must take responsibility for business resilience. They must understand the threats and risks, put policies and processes in place to minimise them, and foster a culture of learning, where security is built into every system and where all staff can raise issues without blame or recrimination.  

It is a difficult message to deliver at a time of increased financial pressures, but leaders must understand the importance of sustained investment to build robust cybersecurity. 

Henry Hughes is Jisc’s cybersecurity chief technology officer

A version of this article appeared in Research Fortnight

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Prospect of strikes at UKRI highlights challenges facing the funder

In many ways, it’s like the start of 2022 over again: the UK research sector is anxiously waiting on news of Horizon Europe membership, UK-based winners of EU grants are choosing to leave the country (see cover), and the University and College Union is gearing up for strikes. But this year, there is an added layer to the turmoil: the prospect of walkouts at UK Research and Innovation.

As we report on P6, staff at UKRI are likely to be balloted on industrial action by the Prospect union later this month, as part of its battle to secure pay rises for public sector workers amid the cost of living crisis. The mood of staff at the funder is as stormy as those in many other organisations and matches the inclement weather around much of the country. As one told Research Fortnight: “Over the last decade, our pay has significantly declined in real terms. We struggle to recruit and retain technical staff, leaving those remaining trying to do even more.”

With the government firmly digging in its heels over improvements to conditions in that most emotive of sectors, the NHS, and refusing to back down amid widespread disruption in the rail industry, the situation at UKRI clearly isn’t going to shift the dial directly. Any action is likely to be for the long haul, as unions bank on the government caving in to widespread walkouts across numerous sectors.

But the feelings of UKRI’s Prospect members—most of whom voted in favour of strikes in an indicative poll in December—are already highlighting the deep challenges facing the UK’s national research funder. 

UKRI is being asked to do more with less following two reviews heavily critical of its bureaucracy. Few would argue with the view that more efficiency would be welcome, but the organisation is in a deepening state of flux, being asked to cut staff at the same time as making significant changes to the way it operates and to numerous internal and external systems. And its effectiveness seems to be on thin ice. 

Last week, chair of the House of Lords Science and Technology committee, Julia King, warned that a “profusion of sectoral strategies” was leaving UKRI “pulled in numerous directions without adequate resources to meet the demand”.

The danger of a snowball effect for the research sector, with UKRI struggling to process grants, is very real. Christopher Smith, head of UKRI’s Arts and Humanities Research Council, warned in November of the likelihood of “signal failures” over the coming years as the funder faces staff cuts at a time of immense change. 

The government should pay attention to these gloomy forecasts, particularly given the rising chance of the UK’s ‘plan B’ alternative to Horizon Europe being launched in the coming months. 

Plan B looks increasingly like it’s becoming plan A, and its launch would likely entail significant extra work for UKRI. That may require the government to move more slowly than it would like on some of its cost-cutting drives. 

After a two-year hiatus on participation in Horizon itself, with all that entails for long-term research projects, the sector cannot afford for any replacement to be hit with a whiteout. 

This article also appeared in Research Fortnight

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Back page gossip from the 18 January issue of Research Fortnight

Minister unaware

Britain’s giant leap forward as a science superpower took a nosedive last week when nine satellites launched from Spaceport Cornwall were lost over the Irish Sea.

Many people were puzzled by a photograph released by business secretary Grant Shapps to commemorate the non-event. Posted on Shapps’s Twitter account before the comedown, the image shows the secretary of state for the final frontier chatting to two official-looking men next to a rocket.

The keen-eyed have observed that the photo looks an awful lot like one published in the summer, which also featured Boris Johnson in the shot. Claims have been made that the once and future prime minister has been Photoshopped out of the picture.

A source close to the minister for rocket science said: “Grant wasn’t aware anyone had edited the picture.” The post has now been deleted from his account.

Review writer

If you are enjoying the ITV drama series about the disgraced 1970s MP John Stonehouse, you might want to find out more by reading Agent Twister: John Stonehouse and the Scandal that Gripped the Nation, by Philip Augar and Keely Winstone. That’s the same Philip Augar who chaired the review of post-16 education and funding for Theresa May’s government.

Blue tick

Education secretary Gillian Keegan is one of several cabinet members to have had their Twitter accounts hacked in the past month. Over Christmas Day and Boxing Day, Keegan’s photograph was replaced with a picture of Twitter owner Elon Musk, with several tweets from her account promoting a cryptocurrency event. 

Student lodgings

Joining societies has long been an extracurricular activity for students, but a recent story about the Freemasons in Scotland caught our eye. Worried that their arcane and clandestine rituals may be putting off younger initiates, the Grand Lodge of Scotland is on a youth drive.

It transpires that in 2014, a university lodge was launched in Edinburgh with the aim of recruiting students. The St David Lodge is, in fact, part of an extensive university lodge scheme that includes branches in St Andrews, Aberdeen and Glasgow.

The scheme “provides an avenue for young men, particularly those in higher education who have expressed an interest in becoming a Freemason but would otherwise be precluded from joining the Scottish craft”, according to the Provincial Grand Lodge of Edinburgh’s not-so-secret website.

A similar scheme is run by the United Grand Lodge of England, with 87 university lodges, boasting 3,400 members, open to “undergraduates, postgraduates, senior members of the university and alumni”. The oldest university lodge, from 1818, is in Oxford.

Your correspondent contacted the Freemasons’ press office to find out how many students are actually involved in the scheme. As we go to print, that number remains a closely guarded secret

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