Grants for universities that work with employers to boost economic growth are being continued, it was announced today.
The Higher Education Funding Council for England will allocate £600m between 2011/12 and 2014/15 to 98 universities with a good track record of working with business and other employers.
The Higher Education Innovation Funding grant is being continued at the same level of £150m a year as previous years. Hefce described it as ‘good news’ for universities, which are wrestling with significant cuts to their budgets.
Allocations are based on income earned through business activity. The grant is usually used for pump-priming ideas and boosting university capability to help business or economic development projects get off the ground.
Among universities to receive the maximum sum of £2.85m over the three years are Cambridge, Oxford, Durham, York and Southampton. But some 32 English universities will not receive any of the funding.
Hefce chief executive Sir Alan Langlands said: ‘The government’s commitment to maintain Higher Education Innovation Funding from the last spending round, and to ensure stability over four years, is most welcome.
‘Universities will have a vital role to play in economic recovery and growth and achieve a significant return on this important public investment.’
Universities minister David Willetts said the money was ‘a vote of confidence in our higher education institutions and a major investment in growth’.
But the University and College Union called the funding a ‘gimmick’, saying it would replace less than 10% of cuts to teaching budgets over the same period.
UCU general secretary Sally Hunt said: ‘Today’s announcement reminds us just how deep and damaging the cuts to higher education funding are.’
She called for more funding to come from businesses themselves. ‘Business certainly has a track record of benefiting from higher education through links with universities, research and the pool of talented graduates that enter the job market each year. It is high time that business made a greater contribution towards the costs of university,’ she said.
