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Universities are cutting back on vital research, with world-leading work on deadly conditions such as cancer and heart disease under threat from an erosion in funding from government and charities, according to a report.<\/p>\n
The report, compiled by Universities UK, found that one in five UK universities have reduced their research activity, including cuts to life sciences, medicine and environmental sciences, and many said they were expecting to make steeper cuts in the future because of mounting financial pressures.<\/p>\n
Health charities are major funders of high-value medical and life sciences research \u2013 including areas such as oncology and dementia \u2013 but the report said universities \u201care backing away from charity-funded research\u201d because of the additional costs involved.<\/p>\n
Dan Hurley, Universities UK\u2019s deputy director of policy, said: \u201cThere is a real need for us to work with funders and government to address some of the risks here and get under the skin of what this might look like.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we do know is that most charity funding is in the medical and health space, so it is definitely having an impact in that area.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can\u2019t pinpoint the degree to which this is impacting specific disciplines but the findings in this report are a warning that really difficult decisions are being taken on the ground and if we want to maintain the UK\u2019s international competitiveness when it comes to research then we need to go further to support it.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile these headline findings are a strong warning in themselves, this is going to require ongoing monitoring.\u201d<\/p>\n
The report, done in collaboration with the Campaign for Science and Engineering and the Association of Research Managers and Administrators using surveys of academic researchers, found that \u201csustained financial constraints\u201d were likely to diminish the estimated \u00a354bn annual contribution made by university research to the UK economy.<\/p>\n
The study found there had been a 4% decrease in research staff in the biological, mathematical and physical sciences in the last three years, while staff in medicine, dentistry and health have dropped by 2%, mainly in highly expensive clinical medicine.<\/p>\n
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Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n The funding difficulties were undermining university research culture, and managers reported an impact on morale and wellbeing, less participation in conferences and knowledge exchanges, and had particular concerns for early career researchers who were struggling to get the support they needed to establish networks.<\/p>\n One major reason was that UK government research funding awarded on the basis of departmental track records and quality has been severely eroded by inflation, while universities are less able to use international tuition fee income to subsidise research because of falling numbers of overseas students.<\/p>\n \u201cFluctuations in international recruitment and fees from international students will have an impact on research funding \u2013 because universities aren\u2019t able to recoup the full economic cost of research, cross-subsidisation had become a feature of funding for many,\u201d Hurley said.<\/p>\n The report concluded that the UK\u2019s position as a global leader in research and innovation is under threat as research becomes too costly to sustain, and more universities are expected to make \u201ctough decisions\u201d on cuts in the future.<\/p>\n \u201cUniversities are doing everything they can to improve efficiencies and address those financial challenges. But what\u2019s clear is that further efficiencies are not going to be enough on their own to address these broader risks to areas of research, with implications for our research system\u2019s international competitiveness.<\/p>\n \u201cSo we also need action from the government on the future of quality-related funding, which hasn\u2019t kept pace with inflation for a decade. That\u2019s going to be critical to restoring stability to areas of research,\u201d Hurley said.<\/p>\n The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology has been contacted for a response.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Universities are cutting back on vital research, with world-leading work on deadly conditions such as cancer and heart disease under threat from an erosion in funding from government and charities, according to a report. The report, compiled by Universities UK, found that one in five UK universities have reduced their research activity, including cuts to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20865,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[506,304,116,12807,3141,489],"class_list":{"0":"post-20864","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education","8":"tag-crucial","9":"tag-cut","10":"tag-funding","11":"tag-reduced","12":"tag-research","13":"tag-universities"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20864","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20864"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20864\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/20865"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}