Strength in numbers

The bigger they come, the lighter they fall.

The big beasts do best in the public funding allocations for 2014-15 published today by the Higher Education Funding Council for England. Research-intensive institutions have seen their public funding protected to a much greater extent than those that used to rely on teaching grants.

Total research funding is maintained with only small shifts for most individual universities. Total teaching funding, however, falls sharply as tuition fee income takes over. Allocations from the Higher Education Innovation Fund are relabelled “knowledge exchange funding” and maintained at the same levels.