If enacted, plans for a “more focused volume of research, delivered with higher-quality, better cost recovery, and stronger alignment to short- and long-term national priorities” will have massive implications for how some £20 billion of public research funding is doled out across UK universities. Why would a university choose to forgo even modest research revenues and reputation boosts from the Research Excellence Framework (REF) and other sources to “specialise in teaching”? For Womersley, the REF – currently paused until late December for a methodological rethink – is the obvious way to incentivise research specialisation given its central role in distributing £2 billion a year of “quality -related” research funding in England alone. Given that the lion’s share of UKRI’s £9 billion a year research funding (rising to £10 billion by the end of the decade) is awarded by its various research councils, tighter criteria on who could apply might also be introduced to reshape the research landscape, he continued. Already, “curiosity-driven research is often only done through the back door”, said Moriarty, whose own research specialises in nanoscience.

Source: The Times November 10, 2025 14:10 UTC