Education Division Update - News July 2008

Published: 21st July 2008

NEWS

Clawback on FP7?

Paul Drath, an expert in the EU's Seventh Research Framework Programme (FP7) has warned that UK universities may be forced to return millions of pounds in funding to the European Union and pay penalties because they are failing to properly calculate the cost of research overheads under the EU's main research programme.

He said UK universities were in danger of falling foul of the European Commission over accounting for the time academics spent on EU projects. The Commission, he said, was keen for anyone working on EU projects to keep full time sheets of their work rather than partial time sheets accounting only for the EU project.

A universities UK spokesman said the issue, although unlikely to be a problem, was being clarified with the Commission.

REF outlines get clearer

Hefce indicated that the traditional notion of "peer review" would be broadened to include "expert review", which would potentially see non-academics help judge research under the forthcoming research excellence framework.

Hefce says it has now established the "shape" of this framework. It says that each subject will be assessed using "some or all" of the following:

• "bibliometric indicators of quality" or "expert review of outputs", or a combination
• "other quantitative indicators"
• "supplementary qualitative information".

It says that this would produce a spectrum, which would see at one end some subjects assessed by bibliometrics, such as the number of times academic's published work is cited in other research papers, combined with other numerical indicators. At the other end, subjects would be assessed by "expert review" in combination with non-numerical information.

Metrics on research income and postgraduate student numbers - which Hefce had said previously would feature - are likely to remain.

Lower Co2 Targets

Universities can lead the way to reduced carbon emissions.

Higher Education institutions have been asked to play a leading role in meeting the Government target - reducing carbon emissions by 60% by 2050. Government and the sector will work to achieve a reduction of at least 26% by 2020.

Funding News

A £65m deal has been struck with employers to provide training for staff who need to add vocational skills to their qualifications.

The agreement is between the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills, and Semta, the sector skills council that represents companies involved in science, engineering and manufacturing.

It means setting aside £65 million of the budget for Train to Gain, which matches business to suitable training providers, including colleges, through a network of "skills brokers".

Part of this fund will be aimed at workers who are already qualified to GCSE or A-level standard.

RAE 2008: Timetable for publishing results

17 Dec 2008: Institutions receive individual results in confidence.

18 Dec 2008: Results made public on RAE website - grade quality profile for each unit of assessment (UoA) at each institution along with the number of full-time equivalent staff submitted to UoA.

5 Jan 2009: Institutions receive subprofiles which break results of each UoA down by "research outputs", "research environment" and "esteem indicators" - and written panel feedback in confidence.

Jan 2009: Subject overview reports for each UoA made public.

Spring 2009: Subprofiles for each UoA made public, excluding those with three or fewer staff.

Sping 2009: Actual RAE submissions made public with confidential material removed.

Brum Blues

The University of Birmingham is being sued for £10million by a former student.

Ikenchukwu UkeviAruevoru is claiming the sum as compensation for "damages, losses, expenses and debts" arising from alleged negligence and malicious actions against him during the course of his PhD studies.

The former student claims he was "humiliated and scorned" by his tutors, mocked during an oral exam by one tutor and that an examiner in the oral test was not an expert in the field.

A university spokesperson said that Mr Ukevi-Aruevoru's initial work "did not proceed satisfactorily and there were concerns as to whether he would be able to complete his research to a sufficiently high standard to obtain a doctorate".