UK Pushes for Brexit Science Deal
Jo Johnson, the UK universities minister, said the government wanted to secure “an ambitious agreement” with the EU to safeguard Britain’s science and innovation, and pledged to allow British universities to continue close research collaboration with their European peers.
Speaking at the annual conference of the Higher Education Funding Council for England (Hefce), Johnson said that such collaborations are critical to the UK’s long-term economic development. “We want to remain a player in European science, research and innovation programmes. And we will continue to attract the best talent from across the world, including the EU,” he said.
The government has been “absolutely consistent” in its plans to secure a strong future relationship with the EU on science and innovation and to allow researchers to continue to collaborate with their international counterparts, Johnson said.
He told journalists that the UK would be able to continue recruiting top EU researchers by encouraging them to undertake their undergraduate studies in this country. “We’re continuing to provide significant certainty to EU students that they are welcome and valued here, we’ve made clear they’re able to access the higher education funding system,” he said.
His speech follows a warning from Philip Hammond, the chancellor, to the House of Commons treasury committee that the UK must prepare for a “bad-tempered breakdown in negotiations” with the EU, which would lead to “non-cooperation”.
The European Commission introduced a note on its research and innovation portal last week, which says that if the UK withdraws from the EU without an agreement with Brussels, British researchers funded under the Horizon 2020 programme will lose access to their grants.
Johnson also used his speech to unveil a new assessment framework for universities, which will measure how effectively universities commercialise their research. The knowledge exchange framework will sit as a third pillar alongside the teaching excellence framework, which measures teaching quality, and the research excellence framework, which assesses research outputs.
The new framework is intended to encourage universities to improve the social and economic impact of their work, through producing spin-out companies, intellectual property licensing and building partnerships with business, he said. He added that since the exercise will be based on existing Hefce surveys, it should not impose a substantial reporting burden on universities. “We’re not plonking a framework on the sector cold,” he said.
As examples of the kind of activity he hopes the new framework will stimulate, Johnson cited the University of Lincoln’s links with Siemens to develop engineering and scientific talent and Sheffield University’s advanced manufacturing and research centre, which prompted supercar manufacturer McLaren to site its new factory in the city. He added that New York University had earned more from Remicade, an arthritis drug, in a year than all the UK universities put together.
“The system as a whole needs to find a new gear,” he said. In addition to providing a scorecard of university performance aimed at driving strategic decision-making, the framework will also inform the allocation of the Higher Education Innovation Funding stream, which supports university links with business.
Research England will lead the work developing the new framework. David Sweeney, its chair, said: “Public understanding about university success in knowledge exchange is important, but external engagement with universities is often badged under more specific names. We will work with the sector and partners to develop ways of describing that success in accessible ways.”
Maddalaine Ansell, chief executive of University Alliance, which represents business-focused universities, said: “The knowledge exchange framework must look beyond simply the commercialisation of research, patents and intellectual property, which are only one aspect of a much wider range of interactions between universities, businesses and communities, alongside entrepreneurial activity.”
Read more at www.theguardian.com
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