UK research faces a radical overhaul

These developments potentially sound similar to how an authoritarian university system is run. In a democracy, academics should be independent and autonomous from state, government, and from institutional direction, and curiousity driven research is fundamental to their work. All lecturing should be research driven. Deans and VCs need to understand this because it seems they are not defending academia strongly enough, which is perhaps why UK academia is losing its global reputation for excellence.

Another problem that seems to be little understood is that most potential university teachers, however committed as teachers, are also driven by research. I can only speak for the humanities, but it seems to me that there are very few aspiring academics who would deliberately choose a teaching-only job. This could mean that it becomes very difficult to recruit the best people to these roles. I acknowledge that there are some good teachers who are not particularly good researchers, and some the other way round, but both are the exception, in my experience (which is quite long).

I thought this is an excellent piece on the subject by Jack Grove, it's knowledgeable and well-researched keeping up with current developments. The focus of this piece is also on science research for obvious reasons, but curiosity-driven research in the Arts and Humanities is the norm and comparatively cheap, in that time is the main resource needing as reflected in the current Teaching and Research contract. Would one of the implications of this raft of policies be that the implementation (and thus regrading) of Teaching only contacts for academics in those universities designated Teaching universities? The case for research led teaching is crucial, that's the point of University teaching in my view in that it is informed by current and leading research by actual practitioners of research.

It seems unavoidable that if you are going to improve the cost recovery of research, without increasing the overall pot, then the only possible result is fewer grants. However, there is danger here. Its not just that institutions will be forced to go teaching only, or that teaching only insitutions will struggle to attract the best people (although both things are probably true), but eve if they could attract the best people, they are unlikely to be able to afford the needed diversity of talent. Lets say you are a teaching only institutions, specialising in teaching molecular Biology. You would need someone who understood the latest, human genetics, crop genetics, medical microbiology, microbial genomics, microbial ecology, structural biology, molecular cell biology, developmental biology, pharmacology, gene-expression biology, RNA biology, computational biology, and many other topics. You might just find people who cover two of these areas. But one or two such areas would not provide a full time job for someone. So you need to find a way to keep the busy for the other 50% of their time. One solution is to get them to teach something where they don't really understand the cutting edge. But that is likely to end up with poorer quality teaching, so your instution would provide less good teaching, as well as no research.

As a student, it was always exciting when a lecturer was talking about the area they themselves worked in amidst the contents of the entire module. Now I'm the one giving the lecture, I try to maintain that same excitement in students. Yes, I have to teach things that I don't do day-to-day as well but there's that added spice when I'm talking about stuff I've actually done. I might have written more, but it's time to go give a lecture... :)

Well to be Devil's advocate here. From HMG perspective, I suppose the argument is that the nation's finances are in a pretty catastrophic state at the moment with borrowing running at £145 billion pa and rising and debt interest payments running at £45 bn per year, we desperately need growth fueled by priority research and skills in key areas. Without growth (and concomitant desperately needed increases in productivity) then taxation revenue coming in does not cover expenditure (especially welfare which is heading to £60bn a year), this we need tax rises (or swinging cuts) which further deflate the economy and promote the vicious circle. So curiosity driven research is all very well but public money needs the focused on the areas that will bring most benefit to the public who pay for it. And, as several of the comments above point out, much most of what we currently teach as academics is not actually research based as most of us have to teach widely and generically. I am lucky to do some research led teaching based on my specialisms, which is the most rewarding part, but it's only a fraction of my profile. Most undergraduate teaching could be done by generalists who keep up to date with the current debates rather than specialist researcher and who are paid less and do not get contracted research time. Also in my experience, the students seem perfectly happy with being taught by non-researchers who they often say are better teachers because they are more focused on the student rather than the demands of their research. Indeed, I don;t think I have ever known a colleague who did not want to do more research and less teaching. maybe when the times are better and the economy stronger we can be more generous and less instrumentalist, but this are very bad just now. I imagine that is the kind of thing that might be argued if one wishes to make such an argument.

The bottom 40 universities need to be closed and student caps introduced at all others so that quality can be brought back into the system. Many Russell groups are taking students they'd never had taken in the past to fund Vice Chancellor extravagance. All vice chancellor posts should have term limits of three years and pay cap at same as it is for a full professor and no more. Univeristies ought to be run collectively not have one person at the top sucking up all the money for their own benefit, many VCs were the bottom of the class and are chancers with no special skills and the office of vice chancellor should be abolished in all univerisities and replaced with representative committees.

But in research terms how do you determine the top and bottom. Do you use the GPA. Well, the actual differences in the GPA are very slight over the scale, so where do you draw the line, a GPA of 3.5 for example, but this conceals an excellence and some areas but not others. And, of course, there have been criticisms of REF a the way the large research intensive Universities actually staff and dominate the subject panels and sit in judgment on each other. We all know that the REF is political and not an entirely objective assessment process, on the whole it tends to satisfy the powerful players so it is supported, despite some growling here and there.

The discussion contrasts curiosity-driven research approach and teaching vs a form of smart specialisation of universities. This is also reflected also in the current education vs skills debates. There has been less discussion in the UK on how universities can play a stronger role in regional ecosystems of knowledge within triple-helix collaborations (industry, Higher education and 'regional/metropolitan' governance). Getting involved in 'smart specialisation strategies' as at the regional level as in the EU, would lead to a more strategic approach of which courses to retain and develop linked to regional needs - both social and economic.

Amidst the prospect of course and institutional closures we can look forward to the internal fights over declared areas of specialisation, this will be genuinely dreadful to manage or to go through as staff members.