London waiting

Are universities in the capital about to lose their research funding subsidy?

As Diana Beech—the chief executive of London Higher and a former adviser to three universities ministers—told us on Sunday, universities in the capital were blindsided by the education secretary’s announcement last week on cutting London weighting from the teaching grant. But are they in line for a similar cut to quality-related funding for research?

Gavin Williamson justified the cut on the grounds of the government’s “levelling-up” agenda. However, the real motivation behind scraping London weighting was surely to avoid having to increase the teaching grant in line with inflation.