Smaller research universities see substantial drop in HEFCE grant

The smaller, research-intensive institutions in the now-defunct 1994 Group will see their grant income for 2014-15 from the Higher Education Funding Council for England drop by an average of 15.4 per cent.

By comparison, the 10 institutions that receive the most research funding from HEFCE—all members of the Russell Group of larger, research-intensive universities—face only a 9.5 per cent cut on average.

The changes in income are largely due to cuts in teaching grants from HEFCE, made as universities’ tuition fee income rises. The levels of research grant from HEFCE have changed very little from 2013-14 to 2014-15.