Government funding for 2015/16
HEFCE has announced some important decisions about how it will allocate government funding for higher education for the next academic year.
These include:
Research funding
- Total research funding will be maintained at £1,558 million.
- The proportion of funding allocated to research judged to be 4* quality will increase at the expense of funding for 3* research.
- In the REF 2014 exercise, the amount of 3* and 4* research across the sector increased by 39%, so HEFCE funding for research will be spread more thinly.
- The amount of Leeds research assessed as 3* and 4* increased by 23% overall: less than the sector increase. This means that Leeds share of research funding is expected to decrease.
- HEFCE is to remove protection for funding for science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) research. However, for 2015/16 only, it will allocate £28 million of transitional funding to ensure that no institution sees a drop in funding as a result of this decision.
Teaching funding
- Total teaching funding will be £1,418 million: £244 million lower than 2014/15 as a result of the continuing transition from the old fee and funding regime to the new regime.
- Within the overall decrease, there will be a 1.4% inflationary uplift in funding allocated to:
new regime students in high cost subjects
very high cost STEM subjects
student opportunity for disabled students
institutions with high cost distinctive provision
- A £35 million contingency fund has been set aside to cover any growth in student numbers that follows the removal of the student number control for 2015/16 recruitment.
- Leeds is forecasting a £6.2 million increase in teaching funding, due mainly to higher than planned student numbers recruited this year.
HEFCE has had to make some assumptions about total funding for 2015/16. The government grant runs only until the end of the financial year 2015/16 in April 2016, leaving funding for the four months to the end of the academic year in August 2016 uncertain. HEFCE has assumed that the 2016/17 grant covering those four months will be a flat cash grant.
The University is planning prudently for this period and is anticipating that teaching funding could be reduced by 10-20%.
You can download a detailed guide from HEFCE about how it allocates funds from the HEFCE website.