Overseas research cuts threaten UK’s ‘levelling up’ agenda

Huge cuts to research funded by the UK’s foreign aid budget are likely to damage efforts to spread spending more evenly across the country, given the strong track record of regional universities in winning grants, analysis shows.

Despite last-ditch attempts to persuade the government to reverse cuts of almost £300 million to research projects funded by the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) and Newton Fund, controversial reductions were due to be confirmed by UK Research and Innovation through final institutional funding settlements this week.

It follows the government’s decision to cut overseas aid spending from 0.7 per cent of GDP to 0.5 per cent in light of Covid-induced financial difficulties.

While the cuts have been condemned for their impact on disadvantaged communities in low- to middle-income countries, analysis by Times Higher Education indicates they will also harm attempts to “level up” research spending , which is sometimes criticised for being concentrated among a handful of elite research-intensive institutions in Oxford, Cambridge and London.

According to publicly available data from UK Research and Innovation, only about a fifth (22 per cent, or £130 million) of the £599 million in active GCRF funds (excluding the £200 million awarded to 12 interdisciplinary hubs in 2019) was won by “golden triangle” universities.

Instead, research-intensive universities and specialist institutes outside the capital were some of the most successful at winning GCRF money, which experts predict will be cut by about two-thirds. According to UKRI data, the University of Leeds currently leads on 15 GCRF projects with a total value of £26.8 million, a sum exceeded only by UCL and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

Nick Plant, deputy vice-chancellor (research and innovation) at Leeds, told THE that his institution had made a “strategic decision” to focus on the GCRF because it aligned with its desire to “tackle the world’s biggest challenges”.

“We have been very successful and are second or third in terms of awards or value of grants, which is something we are really proud about, but now it feels like a bit of headache,” said Professor Plant on the likely impact of cuts, which, he added, may be lessened because some larger grants had only a few months left to run.

That said, the scale and short notice of the GCRF cuts was still “unprecedented”, added Professor Plant. “To have cuts of such size made to projects that are already in flight is unheard of – for some of our research partners overseas [this funding] is quite literally the difference between putting bread on the table or not,” he continued.

Other institutions that successfully won GCRF grants include the universities of Edinburgh (£20.6 million, 17 projects), Liverpool (£20 million, 15 projects) and Manchester (£17.7 million, nine projects). Several specialist institutes including the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (£13.3 million, nine projects) and the University of Sussex-affiliated Institute of Development Studies (£7.3 million, three projects) have also excelled in securing funds.

Alison Phipps, professor of languages at the University of Glasgow, which secured £17.2 million of active grants, said that the impending cuts threatened the clusters of excellence now found across the UK which have been built up using GCRF funds.

“There is a landscape of experts, which is exactly what this money was intended to encourage,” said Professor Phipps. “We are really starting to feel the benefit of this growing regional expertise as universities have taken an interest in different niche areas. These cuts make no sense in policy terms, particularly as research in the government’s priority areas is being cut to the bone.”

jack.grove@timeshighereducation.com