Professor David Eastwood

Chief ExecutiveHigher Education Funding Council for England

JISC Conference 2007‘Sustaining excellence in higher

education ’

13 March 2007

A transformed higher education sector…

Age participationParticipation in Higher Education

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

50

1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004

GB APIEngland HEIPR

GB API = Undergraduate Full-time and Sandw ich entrants under 21 as proportion of average number of 18 and 19 years olds in the population.

England HEIPR = initial participation rate for England population aged 17 to 30years and includes part-time students - for full description see DfES SFR

Participation rates by gender

0.0

5.0

10.0

15.0

20.0

25.0

30.0

35.0

40.0

45.0

50.0

1979

1980

1981

1982

1983

1984

1985

1986

1987

1988

1989

1990

1991

1992

1993

1994

1995

1996

1997

1998

1999

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

Academic year

Perc

enta

ge

API Men

API Women

HEIPR Men

HEIPRWomen

DfES funding

DfES publicly planned unit of funding (real terms 2006-07=100)

4,000

4,500

5,000

5,500

6,000

6,500

7,000

7,500

8,000

8,500

9,000

1989-90

1990-91

1991-92

1992-93

1993-94

1994-95

1995-96

1996-97

1997-98

1998-99

1999-00

2000-01

2001-02

2002-03

2003-04

2004-05

2005-06

2006-07

2007-08

£ pe

r FTE

stu

dent

grantgrant + public feegrant + public fee + private regulated feegrant + public fee + private regulated fee + capital

DfES funding and students

DfES publicly planned unit of funding (real terms 2006-07=100)

4,000

4,500

5,000

5,500

6,000

6,500

7,000

7,500

8,000

8,500

9,000

1989-90

1990-91

1991-92

1992-93

1993-94

1994-95

1995-96

1996-97

1997-98

1998-99

1999-00

2000-01

2001-02

2002-03

2003-04

2004-05

2005-06

2006-07

2007-08

£ pe

r FTE

stu

dent

grantgrant + public feegrant + public fee + private regulated feegrant + public fee + private regulated fee + capital

Student FTE

Main components of HEFCE grantin 2007-08 (£ millions)

1,415

25

738449

4,510

Teaching and WP

Research

V. high cost andvulnerable scienceCapital funding

Special funding

Total grants

• £7,137 million available for 2007-08

• Overall cash increase of 6.4%

• None of the increases are due to introduction of variable fees.

Funding increases

• Available teaching grant up 7.2%, mainly due to additional student numbers

• Research grant up 5.4%• Earmarked capital up 4.8%• Special funding up 3.9%

– Declining proportion of our total budget.

Key priorities

• Progress towards 50% (the HEIPR)

• Leitch (29 - 40% higher level skills)

• Delivering high quality mass higher education

• RAE 2008

• Research assessment beyond 2008

• The growing importance of the 3rd stream agenda

HEFCE Strategy and Funding

Strategy:

• Excellence in teaching

• Widening participation and lifelong learning

• Maintaining a world class research base

• Strengthening HE’s contribution to economic growth and social inclusion

Funding:

• Block grant to HEIs for teaching and research

• Special funding for research libraries and JISC

Drivers for change

• Increasingly diverse student body: non traditional entrants, lifelong learning, new modes of study

• A more demanding student body: students as fee paying customers

• New research approaches and an expanding information base

• The internet and IT enabled tools

• Cost and funding pressures

New Student Cultures, New Patterns of Learning

• What is a university when there is universal access to ‘knowledge’?

• Rethinking the role of the university

• Technologies and pedagogies for the new learning

• How do students learn in the information age?

• Reinventing the university as a site for understanding and interpreting the world

What is happening now? (1) The Library

• Some things do not change: librarians will continue to play a central role

• The “hybrid library”: doing more with the same resources

• From books to terminals to information management

What is happening now? (2) Teaching and learning:

• Students expect immediate access to a range of materials

• Supporting students as independent learners

Research:

• Scholarly communications

• Immediate access to everything - and archiving and data storage

• Delivery to the desktop

• Finding and sifting online information

• Ordering research information

Developing a new framework for the

assessment and funding of research

The new framework

The Secretary of State has asked HEFCE to develop the new framework – working with the other funding bodies. Our key aims will be:

• To produce robust indicators of research quality that are internationally meaningful

• To reduce substantially the burden associated with the RAE

• To rely as far as possible on quantitative indicators

• To accommodate disciplinary differences within a common framework

What about RAE 2008?

RAE 2008 will go ahead as planned and is crucial:

• To provide a baseline for the new system

• To update quality assessments unchanged since 2001 and to underscore the UK’s international reputation

• To inform funding from 2008 until 2014 while the new system is phased in

Beyond 2008: quality indicatorsIn consultation with the sector, we will need to develop new UK-wide indicators of research quality that:

• Are robust and transparent

• Are meaningful for both funding and benchmarking purposes

• Give due credit to user-valued research

• Accommodate interdisciplinary research

• Take account of equal opportunities and early career researchers

Meeting the Shared Services Challenge

• JISC as a model?

• Sustain JISC and the network

• Anticipating the future and understanding affordability

• Beyond JISC (or not): getting value out of inter-operability; or do we need new standards and generic systems?

Envisioning the University of the Twenty-first Century

• What does it look like?

• When is a university virtual and when is it real?

• From the chapel to the library to…what?