York elite status confirmed as research funding increases
The University’s national reputation for research excellence was recognised and made financially secure last week.
Recently released funding figures have confirmed the University as one of the best research institutions in the country, increasing the annual allocation by almost 6% on last year’s figure.
The Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE)’s allocations for 2009-10, released last Thursday, detail a £1.4million rise in York’s research funding, taking the annual total to £25.4million.
York now looks set to leverage this success to attract more world-class research talent, and build upon its strong reputation.
Following the release of the figures, University Vice-Chancellor Professor Brian Cantor said, “research has always been a high priority for the University of York and continues to be so. We regard research and teaching as indivisible. The presence of high-calibre researchers, most of whom have teaching responsibilities, substantially enhances the student experience. The Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) confirmed that students in every department are being taught and advised by leaders in their field.”
Cantor, who has seen York placed in the country’s top 5-10 research universities for the past 20 years, added: “York is one of the most successful universities in the UK in both research and teaching, with world-class activity across the spectrum. That excellence is of benefit to everyone here.”
The University’s funding increase now makes it the 17th highest recipient in the country, despite its small size in comparison to better-funded institutions such as University College London and the University of Manchester.
The direct benefit of York’s high research reputation, and increased funding, is that the University is continually able to recruit the highest quality of research talent – something that Cantor hopes will continue.
“We only appoint world class researchers and always seek to provide good financial and research infrastructure arrangements,” said Cantor. “We won’t be specifically targeting researchers from the ‘pockets of excellence’, but we are always keen to recruit high-achieving researchers wherever they are based,” he added.
Cantor, however, dismissed allegations that York would be head-hunting top talent from smaller, less research-focused institutions.
“Researchers in less research-intensive universities have now been funded through the ‘pockets of excellence’ initiative in the RAE. This gives those universities who feel vulnerable to having their top staff poached a better opportunity to retain their research high fliers. However, the best researchers will always look for the best environment to conduct their research, wherever that may be,” he said.
In an article for the Times Higher Education last month, Cantor stated that he expected “a tendency for some high-quality performers across the whole sector to gravitate over the next year or two towards the top research-intensive universities.”
To a “fair extent” it would be the “perfectly reasonable practice of people seeking to improve their career,” he added.
The funding figures were based upon the RAE, which was released in December. Twelve University departments were ranked in the top ten nationally, while the majority of departments placed inside the top 20.
York submitted over 90% of its academic staff to the assessment, which calculates an institution’s research excellence by analysing the work produced by individual departments.
“The RAE produces quality-related funding and York has done well this time. It helps to enhance still further the University’s reputation and consequently our ability to attract good research students and important research grants. Our motive is to be able to do the best possible research to help solve some of the many problems in the world,” said Cantor.
“Clearly, with an extremely good outcome in the RAE, we are very well-placed to capitalise not only in research terms, but in knowledge transfer,” he added.
However, before looking to enhance York’s reputation, the question now facing the University is whether to reward highly-ranked departments, or to spend money improving those with lower RAE results.
“We have a model for distributing funding which is both fair and equitable, and which makes the most of the respective strengths of our Departments,” Cantor said.
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