OfS offers funding to support defence related skills provision

There’s £50m of programme funds and £30m of capital available from the Ministry of Defence, via the Office for Students, for universities who want to grow “defence-related skills” provision in computing or engineering. A ministerial guidance letter adds a bit more context around links to initiatives to establish Defence Technical Excellence Colleges.

The competition is open to Approved (Fee cap) providers and covers home fee paying OfS fundable undergraduate students (level 4-6). Unusually, the recurrent funding is directly linked to student recruitment – there is money available for each additional student recruited over the baseline position.

This works out at an additional £7,000 per FTE student across three years of recruitment. That’s an additional 794 places each year, with funding profiled across three years of study. OfS reserves the right to redistribute initial allocations if some projects over-recruit and others under-recruit: in the latter case funds will be clawed back

On top of this, providers can also bid for capital funding – this is targeted to drive capacity, covering things like additional equipment and facilities. Again, there is a need to demonstrate a path to achieving an increase in the number of students on eligible courses.

What’s an eligible course? Well, as above it needs to be in a computing or engineering subject area: there’s also a requirement to demonstrate that the subject matter is relevant to careers in defence or associated industries, and that this assertion also aligns with the Local Skills Improvement Plan (LSIP). Providers are also going to need to be currently engaging (or have plans to engage with) the defence industry through teaching, research or other activities – and we get a warning about the need to safeguard institutional autonomy and freedom of speech while doing so.

On top of this, and the standard requirement on project management and value for money, providers need to align with the strategic objectives of the Defence Universities Alliance (DUA), and provide a commentary outlining whether and how the provider – if eligible – intends to engage with the application process. You may well ask what these objectives are, or indeed who is eligible to join – we are not told, and interested providers are told to send an email to an MoD address to learn more about this secretive new mission group.

We first heard about the DUA in last year’s Defence Industrial Strategy – it is designed to “form a more strategic relationship between defence and the higher education sector”. We know Universities UK has a hand in it, and that it will build on existing connections to support careers and encourage “ethical defence and security research”. There’s also talk of a UCAS defence portal (for young people keen to have a career in the industry) along with a tailored clearing system, and plans to develop a Defence Skills Passport.

It seems that the UCAS work is at a very early stage, with the focus being on ensuring how people can get clearer, and more accurate, information about pathways to defence industry careers: expanding, in other words, along similar lines to the existing UCAS careers offer (this kind of thing.)

Meanwhile, I understand that the deadline for letters of intent for the DUA is 13 March. Vice chancellors need to send them to two MOD senior staff (the chief scientific advisor and the director of growth and missions) by that date – with the process open to any UK institution with university title that can explain why it wants to align, and its activity in defence related research, teaching, and other work.

This is just the first part of a process that will then move on to a full application process: it is anticipated that universities will join gradually, in waves: and of course a letter of intent isn’t binding (the deadline isn’t far off and it is unlikely that university boards have discussed the issue yet). The fully fledged DUA is expected to become a mechanism for connectivity and co-ordination between MOD, universities, and the defence industry on skills and research needs. It is expected to be a long term commitment on behalf of MOD.

There were workshops about the alliance held with vice chancellors in the week commencing 21 October last year, according to a parliamentary Written Question response – and further details will be published in due course.

The information in this circular letter adds some other information: there is, apparently, a DUA Charter which requires providers to take “robust and proactive steps to detect, and robustly resist, any foreign interference that attempts to subvert or negatively influence their institutional autonomy or the freedom of speech or academic freedom of their staff, students, members or visiting speakers.”

It’s also unclear whether the DUA has any links to the work of the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory and the already-existing UK Deterrence and Assurance Academic Alliance (DAAA). The only information available on that is an academic reading list, and there was a conference held at KCL in November 2024 (if you missed it, there is a programme).

Clearly the MOD is keen to recruit universities to the DUA – if it is eligible, a provider will get an extra four points against this assessment criterion when it submits a “letter of intent”. One is left with the overarching suspicion that the DUA should really have been a bit more visible at this point.