Millions in public funding awarded to UK PhD applicants without interview

We don't know if interviews are effective, so this makes for a nice natural experiment. I hope Cardiff will compare outcomes for this cohort with previous ones who were interviewed. Also will be interesting to see if without interviews a higher proportion of applicants from minority backgrounds are accepted. If interviews are not a good basis for decisions, or even lead to bias against some groups, we could jettison them!

This article is highly misleading. Interviews are usually for university places not research council funding. I was awarded an AHRC & an ESRC at both universities of Cambridge & Edinburgh without interviews. I also applied for AHRC at Oxford without needing an interview. I was awarded PhD places at both Edinburgh & Oxford without interviews. Cambridge was a brief chat on the phone. This was 2017 more than a year before the strike. Interviews are not necessarily standard practise and it is misleading to suggest so. THE needs to do better research. This article reads as a clumsy swipe at striking academics, rather than something reputable.

P.S. Research Council scholarships are NOT awarded by the university itself. The university does a vetting process whereby they nominate candidates who have the best qualifications and research proposal to compete for research council funding. Then the scholarship is awarded by a SEPARATE body funded by the government. For example SGSAH & SGSSS in Scotland.