Campaigning for extra money for the long-term future of higher education and research has intensified after a decision to advance the start of the next comprehensive spending review.
Funding and research chiefs must prepare their cases for more money in three months instead of the year they had been expecting. Submissions must be sent to government departments by January 2000. Departments will negotiate with the Treasury, and the results - funding for the three years from 2001 - could be issued by the end of the summer.
To unlock more investment, university chiefs had hoped to have strong evidence that the sector was addressing discrepancies in pay between male and female academics, and that a lack of funds put more staff on short-term contracts.
Pilot studies to demonstrate transparency in research funding in university departments - a key condition of funding under the previous CSR - will be running, but preliminary findings will not be available by January. The effects of last year's announcement of higher stipends for PhD students will not be fully known. The case for investment in big, international scientific experiments must also be advanced.
Larry Bunt, chair of the Universities Personnel Association, said the changed timing of the CSR was mostly to do with the timing of the next general election.