New data on business and community interaction from HESA
David Kernohan is Deputy Editor of Wonkhe
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HESA’s Business and Community Interaction (BCI) open data release is of primary interest to those who deal with the way universities interact with their local area and commercial entities – the kind of people who get excited by the Knowledge Exchange Framework (KEF) and hanker for the days of “levelling up”.
If you are becoming rapidly concerned with making the case to government that the higher education sector is of huge local, regional, and national economic importance the tables on spinouts (5,111 last year, of which 4,738 were formed by students or recent graduates) and business interaction (4.1m learner days of continuing professional development delivered) will be of primary concern. But here I want to focus on universities’ role in local regeneration, and in attracting and managing the funds needed to bring about measurable improvements in the lives of many.
Universities often act as a key partner in bits for regeneration funds – formerly from Europe (the European Regional Development Fund and European Social Fund) and latterly from government (UK government regeneration funds, the UK shared prosperity funds, and many other sources).
By all accounts 2023-24 wasn’t a great year for such funding. Following Brexit, a number of European Union (ERDF and ESF) projects came to an end during this academic year – and while UK funding grew slightly in response the overall impact was a dramatic fall from 2022-23 income of just under £500m to a little over half that in 2023-24.
ERDF funding was focused particularly in deprived areas of Wales and the North West of England, ESF focused on Wales, Scotland and the North East. In contrast UK regeneration funds are focused in the South West, while the shared prosperity funds are spread more widely across the less advantaged areas of England and Wales. So as well as a change in the quanta of available funding, there has been a shift in regional emphasis.
This chart allows you to analyse the regional spread of university funding under all the major regeneration programmes by year. Clicking on a region on the map unlocks a by-provider view below.
Universities also helped unlock nearly £2bn of collaborative research funding (via funding, cash, and in-kind contributions) with the public sector last year, the highest on record. Clearly UKRI was the largest contributor to this activity, but other parts of government made a significant contribution.
Cynically, you could see these two charts as highlighting the ability of higher education providers to attract public funding. But the majority of these allocations and awards were competitive – universities had to convince that they were best placed to deliver these projects and reap the benefits of research collaboration. A multi-year track record of funding suggests that the sector – as anchor institutions – may be best placed to drive these benefits.