HEFCE postgraduate research funding consultation

Members may be interested in a current Consultation on the allocation method for postgraduate research funding from 2012-13 being run by HEFCE.  This has been notified to all universities but may not have percolated to all staff.  It is of particular interest to work in our field because it relates to the research degree programme (RDP) fund, which in 2011/12 provided £205 million in proportion to PGR numbers.  Although there is a proposal slightly to increase the total available, the Consultation is also proposing the limitation of this funding to stronger research environments as indicated by RAE outcomes.   The reason this may be of particular significance to work in our field is the probably wide dispersion of research postgraduates in media, communication and cultural studies, meaning that many students currently study, or in future will wish to, with supervisors in Departments which may not meet the threshold proposed in the Consultation.   The likely concentration of research students in fewer Departments may therefore not be in the interests of fields like ours.  If you wish to feed any comments to your own Institution see the Consultation paper at https://www.hefce.ac.uk/pubs/hefce/2011/11_09/.

MeCCSA will be responding to this Consultation (by the deadline of June 20th).  If you have views you wish us to consider and incorporate please email Peter Golding (peter.golding@northumbria.ac.uk) or any member of the Executive Committee.