Funding matters: a case study of two universities’ response to recent funding changes

Abstract

Abstract The effect on research and teaching of the new method of funding universities introduced in 1986 by the University Grants Committee is examined. The results of a questionnaire on these issues, distributed to over 250 academics at two English universities, are presented. The results indicate that for all categories of academic staff there has been an increase in teaching activities, and a concurrent reduction in the amount of time spent on research, suggesting the possibility of a trade‐off between research and teaching. Some change has occurred in the type of research that staff undertake, with a movement to more applied and less basic research. One of the two universities studied is an ex‐College of Advanced Technology, ranked ver low in the research selectivity exercises, and the other is a long‐established multi‐faculty university, ranked very high in the research selectivity exercise, but the pattern of results is nevertheless very similar for both. Funding methods clearly seem to matter and these results raise two fundamental questions: is the aim of government funding policy to have these effects on funding and research?; and does the government intend all universities to react in a similar way, as these results suggest they do?.