Finding a sustainable way to fund postgraduate research isn’t easy

Funding postgraduate researchers is expensive. As UKRI’s new report by Pye Tait Consulting on the full economic costs of doctoral training shows, providers are recovering around 46 per cent of the full economic cost of PGR training and supervision.

For those unfamiliar with full cost recovery a university is required to estimate the full economic costing (FEC) of a research project. This is calculated using a method called Transparent Approach to Costing (TRAC). UKRI has a handy quick guide on TRAC but essentially the cost of research should be calculated against three areas

• Directly incurred costs – Things incurred specifically in the delivery of a project
• Directly allocated costs – Costs that are shared across multiple activities
• Indirect costs – Costs that are not specific to a project but make its delivery possible

The point of TRAC is that all providers have a single basis from which to work out the FEC of a project when it comes to bids, assessing the sustainability of their work, and understanding the impact of various resource allocations over time.

Cost recovery is then the proportion of funding needed to do a piece of research that is covered from a source that isn’t the provider’s own resources. Currently, research projects funded through research councils require universities on average to find £3 in every £10 for every project.

As the latest UKRI report demonstrates, the cost recovery for funded postgraduate research students (PGRs) is significantly lower.

It is worth noting that the extent to which universities are using FEC to calculate their own costs for supervising PGR is unclear. This may seem like quite a significant oversight to not measure the actual costs of student recruitment but this isn’t that unusual in the wider student recruitment landscape.

In some ways measuring the aggregate cost of PGR instruction is even harder. Around 20 per cent of PGR is funded by research councils while the remainder comes from a range of self-funding, sponsorship, and collaboration. No one source covers the full cost of teaching so the difference is made up from QR funding, partnerships, and like much else in higher education cross-subsidy by international student fees.

Among those working in research policy across the sector it is widely believed that recruiting PGRs is done at a loss. The obvious and immediate risk is that the future of research policy relies on a pipeline of researchers, while the future of universities requires them to get on a more financially sustainable footing. If those two imperatives are in tension universities will likely do the things that stop them shutting the doors, like recruiting fewer PGR students, irrespective of the wider consequences of the county.

In managing this dynamic providers are pooling their different QR pots to fund doctoral study. The report notes that QR has been variously used for “studentships, supervisor time, training activities, administration, and equipment, and is also on occasion used to support wider activities and investments related to sector reforms.” There is a wider debate to be had on the future of QR but one of its core purposes is to allow universities to invest flexibility into the things they are important to explore areas of research which may otherwise not be funded. This is how the blue-sky and experimental emerges. This is a very different use of QR than simply finding a new pool of funding to cover the basics of what it means to be a higher education institution.

And this is one of the key challenges the report raises. There is no policy appetite to say that all costs of supervision should be covered without universities using their own resources. However, the balance toward universities using their own resources seems to have shifted significantly because of the implied costs of PGR. Universities are investing in the research environment, staff time, and match funding to make their internal PGR ecosystem work. However, the things which are needed to make for a successful PGR experience only become more expensive over time. Time for staff to supervise PGRs properly. Training which is tailored and useful. Specific equipment for specific disciplines with instruction on how to use it. And the wider ephemera that comes with being a good employer and teachers like careers advice, pastoral support, and networking opportunities.

The research demonstrates there are limitations in understanding the true costs of PGRs. Providers reported that TRAC data did not cover the full range of ancillary costs associated with PGR. Providers wish to increase their PGR numbers but their ideal cost recovery rate would be between 80 to 100 per cent. There is no viable financial route to increasing cost recovery to these levels without reducing the overall research cost base and therefore these two ambitions are in conflict. The risk, as implied in the report, is that

If circumstances dictated, some HEPs [Higher Education Providers] – primarily TRAC peer groups A and B – said they would prioritise investment of resources (and therefore PGR student numbers) into subjects with a track record of research excellence. STEM subjects would likely be prioritised over arts, humanities, and social sciences, to an extent, with the strategic driver being the greater impact on the REF (Research Excellence Framework) score and subsequent QR funding, in addition to STEM subjects requiring greater investment in running costs, e.g. lab space and consumables.

This is the core issue. It’s not that the entire PGR ecosystem may fall apart but that the funding arrangements lead providers to make what are perceived as less risky choices. Maintaining similar numbers of PGRs to do similar things in ways to meet the incentives in front of them. The route to breaking this dynamic raised within the report is to recruit more international students which is also recognised as risky. A seemingly insurmountable gap then emerges between what the sector wishes to do and what it can actually afford to do

Ideally, most HEPs would like to increase the total number of PGR students, so long as they can continue to offer the expected levels of service and experience to students, as HEPs feel this may be a way of accessing more funding via QR RDP (although were all HEPs to increase PGR student numbers, QR funding would simply be spread more thinly). Increased student numbers could also be supported through increased funding levels and greater investment by HEPs themselves.

Absent more funding there are only a range of third-rail issues to bridge the expansion-funding chasm. Either reform QR funding to be more directed toward development of PGR which will hurt the wider ecosystem. Fund PGR more generously but in fewer places or disciplines. Redirect organisational resources toward PGR from other areas. Or, and what ends up seemingly the most likely, continue to push for a mismatch of funding pots and programmes that in total make PGR just about sustainable if always seemingly below its collective potential.