Think pieces

‘Levelling up’ the UK regions

Dr Peter O’Brien, Executive Director

A very Happy New Year to YU members, partners and friends, and best wishes for a successful 2020.

I was fortunate enough to be able to take time out over the festive period to pause, recharge the batteries and spend some quality time with the family. During the past two weeks I did, however, keep one eye on the latest stories in relation to the new government’s plans for local and regional development following the Conservative Party’s victory in last month’s General Election. In particular, a couple of news items caught my attention, both of which relate directly to YU’s strategic objective of ensuring that the higher education sector collectively in Yorkshire plays a stronger role in attracting more investment and greater prosperity to the region.

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Breaking the student-graduate stereotype

Professor Roger Lewis, YU Associate

In spite of the profound changes in the university student body over recent decades, something of a ‘stereotype’ persists: the 18-year-old choosing a course and university by consulting prospectuses, friends and family, then leaving home to study and live in a hall of residence. After getting a degree the graduate moves again to some other part of the country, to begin a ‘career’.

The model, influential in driving the sector’s growth, has never told the complete story of higher education. Although part-time study has reduced significantly over the current decade, many part-time students work during the day and then participate in evening study; thousands of students who study by distance or open learning from home, work or a mobile base. But these students have often seemed marginal to decisions about funding, curriculum and learning provision.

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Getting regional value from knowledge exchange

Professor Roger Lewis, YU Associate

The higher education sector welcomed the announcement last month from Research England ‘Minister announces new direction for knowledge exchange funding’ that the Higher Education Innovation Fund (HEIF) will rise to £250 million by 2020-21 (an uplift of over 50% since 2016). Funding for the Yorkshire region moved from £20.1 million in 2018-19 to £20.4 million in 2019-20 and we can thus expect a further increase for 2020-21.

HEIF’s purpose is to develop university-business interaction. What is covered by ‘HEIF’ has always been a source of debate. The ‘I’ in the acronym stands for ‘Innovation’, used here in its business sense, with a strong implied link to technology and the application of ‘research’ to improve productivity. The new emphasis though is on ‘knowledge exchange’ (KE) – like ‘innovation’ another portmanteau term.

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The value of expertise

Dr Peter O’Brien, Executive Director

Last week, I was in Montréal speaking at an international conference on the subject of regional innovation. The event coincided with half a million people – many of them aged under 16, including the activist, Greta Thunberg – taking to the streets of the city to call for action to address the climate emergency.

Whilst in Canada, I heard of some ground-breaking studies and policies on local and regional research and innovation processes. Coupled with how science and expertise is shaping public opinion on a theme as substantive as climate change, my visit to Québec re-emphasised to me the importance we should attach to universities building and sustaining effective relationships with local communities and the wider public, as well as business and governments.

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What central banks and universities have in common

James Ransom, YU Associate

Last month Andy Haldane, Chief Economist at the Bank of England, gave a speech at the University of Sheffield asking if all economics, like politics, is ultimately local. The speech attracted attention for its discussion of whether we can capture and model detailed data on the economy at a far more local level. But there are two other points in the speech worth exploring further.

The first is recognition that higher education, alongside financial services and the creative industries, are sectors that ‘exhibit the highest economic complexity and thus potentially generate the highest value-added’. Economic complexity means the amount of embedded knowledge.

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In what sense an innovation problem?

Dr Peter O’Brien, Executive Director, Yorkshire Universities

Yesterday I attended the annual conference of the Yorkshire and Humber Academic Health Science Network (AHSN), in Leeds, entitled, ‘Transforming Lives Through Innovation’. The previous day I was at the White Rose Consortium’s Industrial Strategy ‘Working in Partnership’ final conference, which showcased the contribution of the social sciences to meeting industrial strategy opportunities and challenges. The timing of the two conferences came a matter of hours after the first of four speeches by the Universities Minister, Chris Skidmore, setting out how the Government intends to achieve its ‘2.4% R&D/innovation investment’ target by 2027.

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Towards a more place-sensitive approach to R&D and innovation investment

Dr Peter O’Brien, Executive Director

Last week saw the House of Commons Science and Technology Select Committee hold its final evidence session, as part of the Committee’s inquiry into the ‘balance and effectiveness of R&D expenditure’. In evidence to the Committee, Yorkshire Universities highlighted ten issues that might help government and its agencies create and sustain a more spatially-balanced approach to R&D and innovation activity and investment.

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The link between KEF, anchor institutions and the Industrial Strategy

Monika Antal, Executive Manager

Alongside the Research Excellence Framework (REF) that assesses research, and a Teaching Excellence and Student Outcomes Framework (TEF) that measures teaching we are now gearing up for the Knowledge Excellence Framework (KEF), which as you would expect will examine knowledge excellence. Yesterday’s announcement regarding the KEF pilots, of which the University of Sheffield will be one of the first participants, presents a timely opportunity to examine the broader context surrounding the KEF, and its linkages with other initiatives.

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