The fightback begins

Alex Bols

The director of the 1994 Group says the latest round of government funding is only helping rich universities get richer. But what can he do? The man with the toughest job in university administration talks tactics with Miriam Frankel.

If recent events are anything to go by, things aren’t looking too good for the 1994 Group of smaller, research-intensive universities. In March, four members defected to the Russell Group. This month, the 1994 Group watched helplessly as 23 Russell Group universities took the lion’s share of £10 million of government funding to help the 30 most research-intensive universities in the UK with the costs of open-access publishing. Just a week later, £6m of extra funding for the Higher Education Innovation Fund was up for grabs and went to Russell Group universities in 11 out of 12 cases.