How sustainable is the England’s university research base?
Back in December, the Innovation and Research Caucus (IRC) surveyed the financial leaders of 74 universities in England, aiming to shed light on “the impact of financial stringency on universities’ investment and planning decisions”. This was against the backdrop of data showing that universities in the UK lost £6.2 billion on research grants in 2023-24 as the gap between grants and costs widened.
The IRC report noted cuts across a range of research support activities, with 35.6% of universities surveyed saying they are reducing support for research facilities and equipment, and 36.8% scaling back support for internal research consortia.
This context made even bleaker the news that curiosity-driven research at UK Research & Innovation will remain flat from 2026 to 2030. The news was confirmed just before Christmas by UKRI, although the announcement also set out that funding for UK Government priorities and innovation will rise. In 2026-27, UKRI will spend £3.65bn on curiosity-driven research, while in 2029-30 it will spend £3.64bn. While the agency’s overall budget will rise in line with inflation at 2%, flat cash for curiosity-driven research represents a real-terms decline.
Elsewhere, the UK Government’s plans for ten-year budgets for some research organisations will be dependent on projects aligning with policy priorities, according to DSIT’s Permanent Secretary. Speaking to the Commons’ science, innovation and technology committee, Emran Mian said that while the criteria for the ten-year budgets are “designed in such a way that we could be working on a number of scientific areas, I think you should probably expect that these fit the wider government priorities in relation to economic growth [and] the industrial strategy areas”.
The other topic dominating the headlines around the future of research was – of course – around the use of AI. According to one new report, the credibility of the next Research Excellence Framework relies on getting a clear picture of how artificial intelligence is being used. Researchers found that AI is being deployed to prepare REF submissions in some capacity by many universities, but there is wide variation in how it is used. While some institutions are using common generative AI tools to gather evidence of their research impact, others are developing their own in-house tools designed to review, assess and score their research outputs. The report sets out detailed recommendations for how the adoption of AI in REF2029 can be done in a robust and equitable way. Elsewhere, one researcher indicated that humans could be replaced by artificial intelligence in some social science surveys as AI can produce results that are “shocking” in their similarity to human responses. Liangping Ding, a metascientist working at the University of Manchester, told Research Professional News (£) that AI has the potential to replace human participants in some research activities.