Reducing research time is an attack on academic freedom

It seems highly unlikely that the University of Kent is the only UK university “considering” reducing the baseline time that academic staff have for research from 40 per cent to 20 per cent of total working hours. Indeed, the University of Exeter did so more than a decade ago, and Kent’s consultation, announced earlier this month, seems unlikely to alter its intention given the financial strife it finds itself in.

It has long been accepted that teaching income subsidises university research. But this principle is now under question in England as tuition fees for home undergraduates no longer cover teaching costs. Kent’s solution seems to be to get academic staff to teach more and force them to compete for research funding if they need more time for research. This has bleak implications for academic freedom.

In terms of research, academic freedom has been defined by Terence Karran and Lucy Mallinson as the freedom to determine what shall be researched, how and why, and “to determine the avenues and modes…of disseminating research findings”. Making research highly reliant on grants contradicts this definition since it will give funders an outsized influence on what research questions are pursued, what theoretical approaches are favoured and what methodologies are most appropriate.

In some hard sciences, grants are, of course, vital. But this is not always true for the social sciences or the humanities. Often, what we most need is the time to think. But the equivalent of one day a week is insufficient to produce world-class research, particularly since the demands of teaching are also outgrowing the nominal time allocated to it. Hence, much of the 20 per cent of academic time set aside for research will be devoted to writing grant applications, in which we may have little intrinsic interest.

Nor are those applications likely to succeed. To take just one example, the success rate for the Economic and Social Research Council’s responsive mode grants in 2022-23 was a miserable 11.7 per cent. If more people apply, this rate will fall even lower. Yet the outlay on making applications that have virtually no chance of success seems to go wholly uncosted.

Of course, research councils are not the only source of funding. Why, critics might say, don’t we seek industry funding instead? Many already do. In the US, the National Science Foundation reports that the corporate sector funds 36 per cent of basic research, close to the 40 per cent share from the federal government. This is often advantageous, but it also has disadvantages. When companies fund academic research, they understandably want measurable benefits, and the quicker the better. But this can skew projects away from what is of intrinsic interest to academics. Would Boeing currently be interested in funding research into bad decision-making and aeroplane accidents? I may remain theoretically free to do that research, but if I am reliant on corporate funding, I will likely be barred in practice.

Facing fearful odds, I know what many will do: work even harder. After all, I very much doubt that universities that reduce research time allocations will also reduce their Research Excellence Framework (REF) expectations. But everyone has a breaking point. Meanwhile, early-career researchers, witnessing their more senior colleagues’ well-being crumble, will be even less incentivised to pursue an academic career, with damaging long-term consequences.

The critics of cross-subsidising research tend to forget that research cross-subsidises teaching reputationally. It feeds into the university ranking systems by which students – especially high-fee-paying international students – are heavily influenced when deciding where to study. Hence, diminishing cross-subsidisation will undermine the foundations on which the whole system depends.

The real challenge is to move higher education funding on to a more sustainable basis. Honest conversations about trade-offs are needed, including about who should foot the bill. There are many demands on public funds, but it would be tragic if this debate only started when the damage done to our universities is irreparable.

Dennis Tourish is professor of leadership and organisation studies at the University of Sussex Business School, and a former staff member at the University of Kent. His most recent book is Management Studies in Crisis: Fraud, Deception and Meaningless Research (CUP, 2019).