Source: Alamy

Under scrutiny: research areas

With the referendum on Scottish independence less than three months away, the biggest higher education battleground has been over whether a separate Scotland would be allowed to continue charging English students tuition fees under European Union law ¨C and if not whether this could lead to a flood of English ¡°fee refugees¡± heading north of the border.

But that is not what keeps Scottish university principals awake at night ¨C they worry more about remaining in the UK¡¯s research council system, according to research drawing on anonymous interviews with 32 sector figures north of the border.

A common research area taking in the remainder of the UK and a newly independent Scotland could become a hot issue if the country votes ¡°yes¡± on 18 September because Scottish universities win more money from the councils than would be expected from the population share. In 2011-12, Scottish universities claimed 15.2 per cent of research council grant funding despite the country¡¯s having about 8 per cent of the UK¡¯s population.

To continue the status quo after independence could be seen as a subsidy from one country to another.

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The Scottish National Party wants present arrangements to continue, arguing that this would best serve both countries, but ¡°university managers believed that negotiations might founder over issues of funding, governance and priorities¡±, concludes , director of the Centre for Research in Education Inclusion and Diversity at the University of Edinburgh. The question is ¡°even more critical¡± to those interviewed than that of tuition fees.

One civil servant interviewed said that the decision on whether or not to keep the area ¡°ultimately has to be London¡¯s, you¡¯d have to assume. And they would probably call that very much on the basis of what the English universities said to them.¡±

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English universities ¡°might be inclined to be a little bit protective about funding¡±, the civil servant went on, and academics in Scotland were ¡°immensely nervous¡± about a new, separate Scottish research council. ¡°I think it¡¯s interesting that they¡¯re being very quiet about all that, and it tells you a lot about their relationship with government that they¡¯re not making a bigger fuss about this in public.¡±

A senior university manager said the decision on access to the research councils is ¡°terribly important¡±. Another said: ¡°Maintaining a single research area is absolutely critical.¡±

Another top manager felt that continued Scottish participation in the research excellence framework was ¡°bound up¡± with common research councils: ¡°The capacity of Scotland to really present itself to the outside world on a peer-based review process that is contained within Scottish Borders I think would be not so good as operating within a UK system.¡±

It has been suggested that there could be a compromise in which Scottish universities stay in a common research area but receive no more funding from it than the Edinburgh government puts in.

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The research is the fifth working paper from an Economic and Social Research Council-funded project on the future of the UK and Scotland.

On tuition fees, interviewees were ¡°sceptical¡± that an independent Scotland would be able to continue charging students from the rest of the UK.

david.matthews@tsleducation.com