British Academy cautions against postgrad research-teaching divide

The government should avoid establishing a sharp divide between postgraduate taught and research-based courses in its funding schemes, the British Academy has said.

Responding to the government’s consultation on postgraduate loans, which closed on 29 May, the academy said that routes into the labour market, and into academia, were varied and that treating taught and research-based courses as distinct could create a problem for students moving from masters to PhD study.

“This is particularly the case in the humanities, where taught masters programmes, both MA and MRes, are a standard route into research degrees,” the academy said in its response.