Monitoring Research Diversity: Changes between 2000 and 2005. Research Report

The issue of how concentrated research funding should be within the UK higher education sector and the implications of such concentration for the health and dynamism of the research base have been monitored by Universities UK for several years. In 2003 we commissioned a report from Evidence Limited to examine the potential impact of proposals on research funding in the Government's White Paper on The Future of Higher Education. These proposals aimed to change the structure of the research base by pursuing a policy of concentrating research funding in the largest and most highly rated university units. This is the new follow-on report from Evidence Limited to explore whether there have been any further changes. The main conclusion is that there has been a measurable overall increase in research concentration across the units of assessment featured in the study. (Contains 3 tables and 6 charts.)