This Philistine Government . . .

. . . has been enough to get me blogging again.
Please take a minute to read this, written by two sad research students (and see also http://www.jeanettewinterson.com/pages/content/index.asp?PageID=448 on the state of the British Library):

Dear All in the Academic Community
The following news may not have come to your attention because it has, by strange coincidence, not been sufficiently publicised. The Department of Trade and Industry has reduced the national budget for UK Research Councils by £68m. Please take a moment to read the BBC article below. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6419261.stm. The focus of the article is on science, but we are writing to you not merely in solidarity with our colleagues in the science departments up and down the country, but in protest against the accompanying cuts to the budget of the AHRC -- the Arts and Humanities Research Council. The AHRC is by far the most important source of support for postgraduate study of English Literature and the other humanities. According to their website, the AHRC has a £75m annual budget (see http://www.ahrc.ac.uk/about/). This budget is to be reduced by £5.3m, or 7%. According to the AHRC’s press-release (reproduced in full below), this cut ‘is clearly a blow to research’ and ‘will impact for years on the wide academic domains of the arts and humanities’. This is worrying news indeed for any postgraduate seeking a long-term academic career. An online petition has been set up in reaction to the DTI cuts. The process is straightforward and self-explanatory. http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/reseach/ (Please note that the spelling ‘reseach’ is correct in this context, due to an administrative error at No. 10, no doubt. Their lack of funding for literacy comes back to haunt them). We see, however, this petition as only a starting-point for the necessary, long-term and committed effort to ensure that the UK research community is not seen as a scapegoat for government failures. Research funding is not a honey-pot to be freely pilfered. The AHRC has stressed that the money will not be reimbursed this year. They intimate that further cuts are also likely. Our silence now would thus set a precedent and continue the Government’s startling and unjust victimisation of intelligence, initiated by undergraduate tuition fees and sustained by cuts to the British Library budget. Our silence now would submit to their attitude that higher education is a private privilege, not a public right. We therefore ask for ideas and dialogue on how we may best react to this dismaying situation. Thank you for your time and your solidarity.

16/03/2007 - Arts and Humanities Research Council Statement on funding.
The AHRC Council met on 15 March 2007 to discuss how to manage a £5.3 million cut in their budget. This has been deemed necessary by the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) in order to contribute to the £68 million reduction in the Science Budget. It is possible the Council will need to make further cuts in due course. The Council wish to express their great disappointment that the DTI have decided to reduce their funds in this way. As the newest and smallest Research Council, the loss of £5.3 million, the expenditure of which had already been planned, will impact for years to come on the wide academic domains of the arts and humanities. Chief Executive of the AHRC, Professor Philip Esler, noted that ‘we will work to minimise impacts on the research community, but the loss of £5.3 million, possibly more, is clearly a blow to research. Our concern is to maintain the health and sustainability of our research community, and cuts inevitably severely limit our ability to do this. Council have had to discuss some difficult scenarios. ‘The arts and humanities research community is 25% of the active researchers in the UK, and their work is a global success story, ranked only second to the US. We can only hope to maintain this level of world class research if investment is sustained. We will inevitably have to defer some of our activities and look at much reduced success rates to manage these cuts.’ The Council discussed a range of options, and concluded the following points:
The £5.3 million cut will necessitate halving the success rate in the Research Leave Scheme, thus removing £2 million from the sum we intended to allocate to this scheme in the current round
The Council agreed the need to defer activities, such as Strategic Resource Enhancement for at least a year, by cutting £1.5 million, and reducing the Strategic Programmes Management Fund by 50% to £570,000
The Council also agreed to defer for a year the Museums and Galleries Research Grants Supporting Postgraduate and early career researchers should be prioritised, so we do not face a ‘lost generation’ of researchers, but Collaborative Training Funds will suffer a cut of £200,000.
Postgraduate research success rates will be greatly reduced if further cuts become necessary following advice from the Treasury
The Council need to await final Treasury decisions on funding, and plans are contingent on this.
As with the other Research Councils, much of AHRC’s expenditure is already committed, because of the long life-cycle of academic research. This has limited options for cuts. As already highlighted some schemes will therefore bear a disproportional ‘brunt’.
The Council will write to University Vice-Chancellors outlining the new financial outlook for arts and humanities research.
The Council is seeking reassurance that the ring-fenced Science Budget is secure for the future.
The Council will continue to look in detail at a range of budget areas, but are unable to give a more detailed analysis than this until the Treasury confirms the Research Council’s final financial position for 2007/2008.