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More Bad News for Philosophy in the UK: The Fall 2008 AHRC Research Leave Competition Has Been Cancelled

Brian Leiter

Details here.  Coming on the heels of this, one wonders what is going on in the UK.  Are we about to see a general cutback in support for the humanities, including philosophy?  Or are these isolated events?  The combination of an improved financial situation in British universities over the last decade, plus a weak dollar, an embarrassing domestic political scene in the US, and generous leave schemes in the UK had produced something of a reverse migration of academic talent, or at least less emigration to the US–that, in any case, has been my impression.  But one imagines that cutbacks to postgraduate support and research leaves will take its toll.

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6 responses to “More Bad News for Philosophy in the UK: The Fall 2008 AHRC Research Leave Competition Has Been Cancelled”

  1. Daniel Nolan

    It's not quite as bad news as it seems, I think. Anyone wanting to get AHRC leave funds for the period that would have been covered by the September 2008 round can apply in the March 2008 or March 2009 rounds. The announced cancellation didn't come with an announcement of any further cuts in the money available for the scheme, so I assume they're allocating the money they would have spread over the March 08 and September 08 rounds in the March 08 round, or something like that.

    The main new headache is that people expecting to have a grant proposal ready in September have to meet a much closer deadline. It also penalises anyone who doesn't have a clear idea of what research outcomes they expect in eighteen months time, which isn't optimal – there's a reason why research applications are normally closer to the time when the grant would be taken up. Still, a deadline shift is better than a further cut!

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  2. Simon Prosser

    Actually it had already been announced that success rate in the AHRC research leave scheme was being cut. Here's the AHRC press release of 15th January 2008. Note the third and fourth paragraphs in particular:

    —

    Important information about the impact of CSR on the AHRC

    The results of the Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) were published in October 2007. While the Government maintained its commitment to increase the Science Budget by 2.5% per annum in real terms, in what proved to be a very tight settlement much of the increase went to maintaining Full Economic Costs at 80% (which will greatly assist HEIs) and into health research. Accordingly, in what proved to be a difficult spending round for most of the Research Councils, the AHRC received the following settlement:

    2008-09 – £103.5m
    2009-10 – £104.4m
    2010-11 – £108.8m

    This represents a rise of 12.4% across a three year period. Since we will need to maintain the Full Economic Costs of awards, this allocation means that the AHRC will need to make some difficult decisions about prioritisation. The settlement is not sufficient to continue funding the present volume of awards.

    Success rates in research grants, which have ranged from 22% – 29% over the last three years, will temporarily decline to about 15% (or possibly lower in some cases). The success rate in Research Leave grants will also decline to about 15% effective from the current round (September 2007 deadline).

    In addition we will need to cut new Postgraduate awards from 1500 to 1000 in 2008 and to about 1325 for the following two years. We will be capping numbers of applications from Higher Education Institutions in 2008 and HEIs should have received a letter explaining this.

    This is disappointing news for the AHRC and the research community. The AHRC remains committed to funding world-class research, and will continue to make the case to Government of the importance of the arts and humanities subject domains, and the need for a sustainable research base to benefit the UK’s economy, culture and creative industries.

    The AHRC’s other priorities for the next three years are outlined in our Delivery Plan, which can be found at http://www.ahrc.ac.uk/about/delivery_plan.asp. We are working with other Research Councils on a number of cross-Council initiatives, such as Ageing, Digital Economy, Global Threats to Security and Living with Environmental Change. We are also launching two new strategic programmes in the spring, Science and Heritage and Beyond Text.

    —

    I'm not sure exactly what the success rates have been in the past for the research leave scheme but my impression is that a few years ago it was well above 15%.

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  3. Thom Brooks

    Yes, the success rates were much higher. What is striking is that "having relatively high success rates" in no way entails that "therefore, there should be drastic cuts to funding." Perhaps, instead, more should be encouraged to apply if bringing down success rates is a goal. Yet, it is also odd at the same time for a research council to be driven to make funding —for graduate students and academic staff— more difficult than it already is.

    Rather, these seem pretty thin arguments at best to undermine the good work in philosophy being undertaken.

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  4. Daniel Nolan

    Simon: Right, that was announced back in January. I agree the cuts to success rates for the Research Leave scheme are very regrettable. But my point was that this announcement about not having the September round didn't come with any further announced cuts.

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  5. Jo Wolff

    From memory: a year ago the success rate was 50%. Then there was an announcement that the government had clawed back money from the AHRC to use for other purposes, and as a result the AHRC announced that the success rate would temporarily fall to 25%. And indeed it is accurate that this is temporary: it has been followed up by a cut to 15% for the present round, and then, in effect to 0% for the next one. I hope Daniel is right that that they are saving the money in order to restore the rate in the future, but at the moment I see no basis for this, unless there is a change in strategy back to support for the 'lone scholar'.

    The problem seems to be that the AHRC did not correctly forecast its future commitments to overheads on 'standard research grants' after the change to the 'full economic costing' funding methodology. Even though the government has increased funding to the AHRC, it has not given them enough to cover their increased commitments. In effect, a much greater proportion of funding is going to universities in the form of overheads, meaning that less is being used to fund direct research costs. And to balance the books in the short term, panic measures are being used. And, it seems, the wrong panic measures, at least from the point of view of the vast majority of researchers.

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  6. Brian

    A philosopher in England sent me the following interesting information:

    I noticed the query on your blog about the likely future of humanities funding in the UK. As it happens, I recently had a conversation about this with a very senior civil servant. To protect his identity, I can't publicly reveal mine. But if you could anonymously insert what follows into the replies to your query, that would be a way of getting some useful information into the public domain.

    (1) There's no doubt that state funding for graduate study and for research leave in the humanities will be significantly cut back in the next few years. The Government needs to reduce its deficit, and supporting serious research in the humanities is not among its priorities. AHRC funds are already being redirected to support what might be called the cultural and heritage industries, with approval from the very top.

    (2) The Government will expect individual universities to bear more of the costs of supporting graduate students and enabling their faculty to conduct research. The Treasury has noticed how the introduction of 'top-up fees' has already made a significant difference to the finances of British universities; those fees are currently capped at just over £3000 p.a., but the cap comes up for review next year. A price for raising the cap is likely to be less public funding for research that is not deemed to be in the country's direct economic interest. In effect, the Government will expect the fees paid by humanities undergraduates to help support humanities graduate students and research. Whether this is feasible remains to be seen: even now, paying £3,000 p.a., students have become much more demanding of lecturers' time.

    (3) One consequence of this will be much greater variation in what British universities can offer to graduate students and their own faculty. Some will want to use any new revenue to offer more scholarships to undergraduates who cannot afford the higher fees. Many universities already use some of the revenue from humanities undergraduates to subsidize the costs of expensive scientific laboratories. What a university can offer its humanists will depend on how effectively they can resist further depredations.

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