Challenge to a dual system

Alistair MacFarlane argues for a radical approach to research funding. The review of the dual support system which has been initiated by the Office of Science and Technology is of great potential significance because it will reveal the gulf between the need and the provision for research. This may in turn lead to a wide-ranging appraisal of all the existing support mechanisms for research, scholarship and industrial collaboration in universities.

The dual support system developed to support laboratory-based research, with universities providing "well-found" laboratories and research councils funding the extra costs specific to particular projects. In arguing for its continuation however, more general principles are invariably invoked.

It is widely held that university staff can teach effectively at the highest levelonly if they are engaged in research, scholarship or some other form of high-level professional activity. A university is seen as an organism, continually evolving and generating new knowledge among its community in addition to teaching standardised curricula, and is seen as transmitting this continually developing knowledge to the wider world with which it interacts.

Curiosity-driven research is seen as an essential activity for an advanced nation, usually in terms of some vaguely-justified input to the creation of wealth, and sometimes in cultural terms.

The dual support system is seen as efficient in supporting research in universities, partly because the research is supported at marginal cost, and partly because providing a research-council component of support encourages competition among university research groups. The community of university research workers provides stability to the national research system, as the key researchers can have tenure which can be justified in terms of the continuing need for teaching and professional training which they also provide.

Arguments are made for some degree of independence for researchers to pursue unfashionable work, to criticise independently new developments in their fields, to pursue hunches and long-shots, and to take new and unformed ideas for original work through to a stage where they might attract funding from appropriate agencies. There is no comparable system to support research in the humanities.

A great deal is going wrong. Most simply and seriously - a shortage of money. The cash is just not going to be available to run the existing form of dual support across the hugely expanded system facing severe competition for funds from other sectors, notably nursery education, further education and training.

The existing forms of research support are thought in some influential quarters not to have delivered manifest benefits for the creation of national wealth, and neither do they seem to be delivering Nobel prizes and other important symbols of national prowess now. Industry is cutting back on its own research and development. The cost of laboratory-based research is rising rapidly. The newest universities are demanding their fair share of the research support cake.

Attempts to shift the balance of research activity across institutions, notably the Research Selectivity Exercise, are creating severe strains, causing non-research activities to be seen by some as second-class, and causing some institutions to channel scarce resources into research in order to increase their research ratings. Some areas of research are becoming institutionalised, and acquiring a self-perpetuating autonomy among peer groups.

It is becoming more and more difficult for new fields of research to emerge, and for new workers to break into the charmed circles formed by established workers. Some excellent work, although of direct industrial relevance and value, is seen to be mostly relevant to overseas industry since no significant UK activity exists in some areas which are related to major research fields.

Some key research infrastructure provisions - such as wide-band networking - are in danger of under-investment because, although they are important to the whole system, they have only a peripheral input to the strategic planning process. It is becoming ever more difficult to justify the different method of support of research in the humanities, and the disparity in scale when compared with the sciences.

The emerging picture is so complex that it is simplistic to talk of modifications to the existing dual support system and naive to argue for its continuation in anything like its present form. There is a real need for the majority of teaching staff to be engaged in the continuing development of their subject, or in some related activity which maintains their intellectual vigour, hones their skills, and makes their skills and knowledge available to a wider community.

Stable arrangements are needed, not least by industry, which guarantee a national research base and a supply of suitably trained research and development workers. However, the cost implications rule out any simple extension or modification of the existing dual support system across the whole of the new sector. If all institutions in all their departments are not going to be able to pursue classical forms of research and scholarship, what can be done?

One alternative is to restrict the dual support system, properly funded, to a relatively small set of research universities. Another is to discontinue the dual support system, and to give all the money involved to the research councils. A powerful argument for doing this is that it will help to contain and control research costs. There is also the disingenuous argument that Oxbridge and Poppleton will both be treated with exemplary fairness since they can both apply to the same research council, where they will be treated on an equal basis, and neither will be unfairly discriminated against by not having a substantial research-related element of funding in their core grant.

A more radical approach is to ask whether some alternative systems of support for non-teaching activity might be explored.

If cost were not an object, then I would argue for a spectrum of activities associated with a multiple support system. We need diversity and we need to support a very wide range of non-teaching activity. The spectrum of activities might include, for example, classical research and scholarship, the development of innovative approaches to learning support, educational technology, industrially-related research and development, consultancy, and involvement with other sectors of education.

To properly support this mixed-mode activity would require a range of agencies and developments, for example, research councils for the basic sciences, a new Humanities Research Council, a new Technology Research Council closely linked to the Department of Trade and Industry, a new Teaching and Learning Board, the location of some national research centres and some key industrial research centres on university campuses, local Educational Development Agencies linking higher education institutions into other local educational sectors, and the creation of a communications infrastructure to support work across the whole sector. In each of these areas there are national needs to be met thatcould provide an economic justification for the development of a coherent and wide-ranging multiple support structure.

Cost, however, is going to be the over-riding consideration. There simply is not going to be enough money to support classical forms of research activity across the whole higher education sector, let alone create a new and greatly extended multiple support system.

The likely outcome will be a set of piecemeal, disjointed, ad hoc responses to increasing economic and political pressures as institutions fight to stay or to become, active in research. They will increasingly have to devise their own arrangements to support different forms of research and other non-teaching activity, and they will need to negotiate a series of collaborations with like-minded partners to share costs. For some unfortunate institutions a no-support system is a more likely outcome than a dual support system, never mind a multiple support system.

Alistair MacFarlane is principal of Heriot-Watt University.