UCU response to research funding report

Responding to a report by the Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI), entitled 'Proposals for the Research Excellence Framework- a critique', the union said the report was right to criticise new guidelines from the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) that call for 25% of future research to be assessed on 'economic impacts.'
 
UCU warned that focusing research in areas dictated by government or business could result in many other areas of valuable research missing out on vital funding. Furthermore, UCU expressed serious concerns that unless universities have complete freedom to properly conduct their own rigorous research there was a very real risk to institutions' academic freedom.
 
UCU general secretary, Sally Hunt, said: 'Today's report is a very timely critique of the new proposals which are essentially founded on a lack of understanding of how knowledge advances and a threat to academic freedom. It is often difficult to predict what research will create the greatest practical impact and history shows us that in many instances it is curiosity-driven research that has led to major scientific and cultural advances.
 
'This "new instrumentalist" approach may lead to an academic brain drain from Britain to countries that continue to value fundamental research. Universities are the sole institutions in our societies that have a mandate to pursue knowledge for its own sake and must continue to do so.'