POSTGRADUATE RESEARCH IN ARTS AND SOCIAL SCIENCES
[This section presented in summary form - Ed.]
Delegate: The major problem in Humanities is lack of resources. As John Laver has pointed out, funding for individual Humanities academics, through the HRB, is far lower than that allocated to the ESRC. Professor Laver has done excellent work in developing the HRB. But no further progress can be envisaged until the Board is upgraded to a Humanities Research Council.
MH: Colleagues on ESRC have done excellent work, especially under the leadership of Howard Newby, to pull the ESRC back from the brink. Funding for Social Sciences is now relatively good. If you believe, as I do, that it is essential to maintain the dual support system, then the only way the Humanities will get its fair share of resources is through the establishment of a Humanities Research Council. It is argued that an HRC may not attract enough extra funding to make it worthwhile. That may be so at the beginning, but bit by bit resources will edge up. There is no incentive to increase resources under the present model.
Delegate: There seems to be a question mark over the future of the dual support system. If it could be retained, that would be desirable. For the Humanities in particular, further selectivity is to be avoided.
MH: If all research funding passes to Research Councils, two things could happen. Continuity of salaries for researchers, already a serious problem, will get worse; and decisions as to what research is done will pass irretrievably into the hands of a small set of very senior, often conservative colleagues. That will undermine the chances of approval for adventurous projects from younger researchers, which often generate serendipitous results. I have argued to the Academy that this is one reason why the dual support system should be maintained. And yes, the dual support system counterbalances the tendency to selectivity. Research Councils look for higher than grade 3 when allocating funds, and left to themselves would speed up concentration of resources much more than is appropriate in our disciplines.
Delegate: I favour the introduction of an HRC. We need also to rethink the whole structure of our arguments for higher research funding. We still think in terms of the lone scholar, but we need to think more specifically about how that scholar's work is now organised. Postgraduates, like academic staff, working in institutions distant from major research centres, need more support than is available for travel and for maintenance away from home. But there are also larger issues, to do with networking, collaboration and their costs. A careful investigation is needed of these, and perhaps a policy statement from the HRB.
Delegate: What has happened to the argument that used to be invoked to oppose an HRC — that without it, Humanities disciplines have avoided the tight controls that others have suffered? And that we have not had to accept the changes in the nature of our knowledge that come through having to establish thematic priorities? (Another delegate: ESRC is required to allocate 70% of its funding for both research and taught course students to the thematic priorities.)
MH: If the quantum has increased, it is worth playing the game — and academics are good at that. The problem in the Humanities is the quantum of funding, and the gap between the allocations to HRB and ESRC is very great. Nothing is risk-free, but individuals have more chance of more money with a bigger cake.
Delegate: Any system with more transparency would be desirable.
Delegate: I come from a department that sits astride the Social Sciences and the Humanities. In my experience, for the sake of the research identity of the individual academic or postgraduate, it is very helpful to have a Research Council that backs your work — psychologically, as well as in terms of resources.
MH: My own preference would be for a joint Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, but that is not politically practical, so I don't pursue it.
Delegate: I don't think we should be frightened of thematic priorities, as long as we can help decide what they are. (Another delegate: The HRB already operates with some thematic priorities.)
Convenor: Can we discuss the position of colleagues in lower-rated departments with diminishing resources? How do they bridge the gap while we are waiting for an HRC to bring increased funding? How do they preserve their research? At our June Pre-Election meeting, Colin Pickthall (Chair of the Parliamentary Labour Party Education Committee) spoke of colleagues he had worked with in a College of Higher Education who were only paid to teach but who nevertheless kept their research going. The system cannot simply abandon them. What do we do to sustain research efforts in areas that have been isolated?
MH: Let me put that in a context. Ron Dearing has asked an important question: Is there any university system in the world that is both committed to mass access and where all institutions are equally and generously funded for all aspects of university work? Of course, Dearing cannot possibly recommend that a whole raft of universities and their students be denied opportunities that the system was set up to give. The broad solution he is likely to come to, I think, and which may go some way to helping, is that the institution in which you teach and draw your salary may not necessarily be the institution with appropriate resources in which you do your research. Given that 80% of university staff work in big cities (and this is not, I agree, a solution for people working in Inverness or Falmouth), then both graduate students and staff can be based in one institution but have a close relationship with the facilities of another. This is particularly possible in Humanities and Social Sciences. The system would have to be organised on the basis that use of the facilities was not a privilege but a right, and the funding for the institutions with good facilities would have to be on different conditions. It would be rather like the funding delivered through Follett, on the condition that facilities be made available to staff of all universities on exactly the same conditions as your own. There are lots of problems; but consider the opposite option — generous research funding for every institution. Is that going to happen? If not, you must find an alternative. This solution is probably easier to implement in Humanities and Social Sciences than in any other area.
Delegate: The geographical problems involved are major ones. If you are teaching in Ulster, say, and researching elsewhere, costs will be high. In the present financial climate, can we be anything but sceptical about a solution that needs extra funding to make it work?
MH: I moved to Salford University when it was only three years old as a university, and was myself faced with the option of trying to build up fron scratch a Research Collection for Linguistics or using the substantial existing library facilities in Manchester, just two miles away. I chaired the Northern Ireland Funding Council for two years, and I know what is involved in encouraging universities to share facilities. But the present situation is going to get worse, not better, and we need to try to be more radical.
Delegate: The Manchester experience is interesting, and worth comparing with the present state of the University of London, which is busy erecting internal barriers. We certainly need to look at different ways of doing things. Given the decline of the monograph, we could be looking for more IT-based collaboration in our research projects. In the future, when we constitute RAE panels, we could have guidelines to encourage assessors to pay more attention to such projects, assess them more adequately, and pay less attention to monographs.
MH: Ron Dearing said recently that the high watermark of competition has passed. I am sure he has recognised that excessive competition diminishes scholarship and reduces value for money. I know university managements are not always amenable to co-operation, but in RAE 2000 I am sure that one option will be for universities that are genuinely collaborating in research to make a joint submission in areas where they think they can score highly. In Manchester, Business Studies might be one such area. If the Labour Party comes to power, they will probably not fund us any more generously, but some of the rhetoric will change a bit, especially as regards the emphasis on competition. That is part of the way forward.
Convenor: There is still a problem for those who are being marginalised; if you have nothing to offer, no-one will collaborate with you.
MH: Yes, you can only talk as equals. But there is another way, particularly when there is an old and new university side by side. That is for research-active staff, particularly younger ones, often appointed with different expectations than their older colleagues, to be encouraged to be, as researchers, part of a team or group based in the neighbouring institution, and regarded as one 'unit' for RAE purposes. It needs active encouragement by HEFCE and by senior managers, but it can be made to work, given goodwill. That seems to me a rational way forward, and individuals don't have to move universities, in many cases.
Delegate: I think someone should speak up for the monograph. Much Humanities research still comes from individuals, and our mindset is very different from the scientific preference for collaborative research. We need to keep the two different strands separate, and not confuse genuine research collaboration with the need to share scarce resources. My main point though is that we must be clear in our minds whether we intend to maintain the inseparability of teaching and research. There have always been individuals and departments who are not strong on research, but if you make a policy of separating the two activities, and create an ethos to that effect, then new appointments will always be made with the distinction in mind, the infrastructure will be there to encourage the division, and you will have a tiered system by default. There must be a national policy decision to maintain that the two go together, or the system will fall apart.
Delegate: As an Admissions Officer, I am especially concerned by the difficulties encountered by part-timers, who already have substantial problems. It seems invidious that they should also be confronted with the possibility of reduced facilities, depending on which campus it is geographically possible for them to attend.
MH: In your region, there are the facilities of three separate university sites available. Should these institutions not be co-operating more closely to make facilities more easily available on an efficient geographical basis? The alternative is to share your own institution's research money more evenly with the other institutions, given the fixed quantum of resource.
Delegate: But your solution has its own problems. Better Web access, for example, is needed for it to work. These things have not yet been addressed.
MH: I agree there are problems. Dearing is very enthusiastic for more IT facilities to be made available, but that is a costly process.
Delegate: I share John Westergaard's concern for future students. If they find themselves in an institution with no postgraduate studies, how do they move on? The number of institutions from which university teachers could be recruited in the future could be vastly reduced — yet plurality is one of the great advantages of the British university system.
MH: Students are finding their own solutions. There is now the concept of 'rebadging'. A student who has a Bachelor's degree from one institution will take his or her Master's year elsewhere, to fit different career aspirations. But I must come back to Dearing's question: What system has ever combined mass access with equally generous funding to all institutions? In the 1980s, we welcomed the move away from an elite system, towards an equal one. Unless you think a Labour Government will at least double the funding for universities, to fund every one like Oxford and Cambridge . . . . No, it's not going to happen.
Delegate: Are there real possibilities for development of the professional doctorate?
MH: Colleagues in the Social Sciences know that there are already DEds, and ones in Business Studies. In Humanities it seems less likely, though there could be such doctorates in, say, Leisure Arts management, Museum and Art Galleries management. There must be the professional dimension.
Delegate: As the discussion draws to an end, perhaps we could note in general the importance of Graduate Schools for postgraduate development, in, for example, encouraging quality improvement, facilitating communication, and encouraging new ways of thinking about interdisciplinary matters.
MH: Let me end on two positive notes. First, a reminder that under Howard Newby, and his successor, Ron Amman, the Social Sciences have been put back on centre stage. All the Technology Foresight programmes, whatever our reservations about them might be, include the concept that there must, crucially, be discussion of what effects changes could have on our present society. That is no mean tribute to the effectiveness of the Social Sciences community. Second, as John Laver has emphasised, there is no conspiracy against the Humanities, and no conflict between the values intrinsic to our disciplines and what society gains from our graduates. We must all go out and talk about the value of what we are doing, and persuade the next Government that Higher Education deserves to be properly funded. We have not yet managed to do that.