Research income targets for Liverpool’s new academics ‘unfair’

Concerns have been raised over “unfair” and “undisclosed” expectations at a Russell Group university that union leaders claim will require recently appointed researchers to win sizeable research grants or lose their jobs.

In a paper submitted to a recent Senate meeting of the University of Liverpool, the institution’s University and College Union (UCU) branch explained it was increasingly worried by the “interpretation of grant-related expectations” used in confirmation-in-appointment (CiA) processes to decide whether academics on probation retain their roles. 

“In some Health and Life Sciences (HLS) contexts, early career researchers [ECRs] have been refused confirmation on the basis of insufficient grant income, notwithstanding the absence of any specified income threshold within the [probation] framework,” says the paper, which argues the agreed expectation is that researchers must only show they are applying for grants rather than having to win them.

Recent cases demonstrated a “material divergence” between Senate-approved policies on CiA decisions, published institutional and faculty criteria and “operational practice”, it explains, stating managers were now using “de facto numerical thresholds” on grant income which created “significant risks of procedural unfairness [and] inconsistent standards across faculties”.

In one case, UCU was “supporting an ECR in HLS who was refused confirmation in appointment on the basis of insufficient grant income, and was issued with a one-year extension explicitly requiring them to secure [more than] £300,000 charity funding, or [more than] £500,000 UKRI [UK Research and Innovation] funding,” says the paper.

“The individual had submitted multiple grants scored 5–6 (internationally excellent or outstanding) yet was deemed to have failed CiA solely because awards were not secured,” it adds.

Criticising the “emerging use of grant-income benchmarking”, the UCU said another researcher involved in CiA proceedings had been told the average research income per academic for their discipline – a figure of £118,000 – and the Russell Group average of £56,000, “with the panel indicating that probationers should demonstrate a ‘trajectory’ towards the latter”.

Such metrics have not been approved by the Senate nor had their source been explained, the UCU argued, stating that aggregate per-academic targets are problematic for ECRs as they likely reflect “a small number of large grants held by senior staff”.

Only five of 20 probationary staff were confirmed in post by the faculty in the last academic session, UCU claims, with grant income frequently mentioned as a major contributory factor for either extending probation or denying confirmation in post.

With grant income central to CiA decisions, Liverpool had effectively introduced a “mandatory individual threshold” for grant income capture “rather than [viewing it] as one element of a balanced evaluation” of individuals, the union claims. 

In a statement, Liverpool insisted there had been “no change to the university’s academic confirmation in appointment criteria”.

“In some discipline areas, it is an expectation that colleagues will secure grant income during their probation period, but decisions are always based on a rounded assessment of contribution rather than any specific metric,” it said.

However, a UCU spokesperson said the increased emphasis on grant-income generation was a significant departure and the “unpublished expectations appear difficult to reconcile with responsible research assessment principles”, adding that “concerns have been raised repeatedly with senior management and through Senate”.

“Just last week, another probationary academic approached UCU after being informed, for the first time and only a few months before the end of probation, that progress towards confirmation was considered unsatisfactory because the level of external grant funding obtained was considered insufficient,” they explained.

The practice raises questions of fairness given the “apparent disparity between the expectations being applied to probationary lecturers and those applied to more established academic staff”, they added.

“In practice, early career academics may face dismissal if they fail to secure confirmation after their probationary period, whereas more senior academics who have not secured external grant funding are not generally subject to equivalent employment consequences,” they said, arguing it “raises important questions about proportionality, consistency and whether probationary staff are, in practice, being held to a higher standard than established colleagues”.

The alleged pressure to win grants is also likely to highlight academics’ concerns over declining success rates for grant applications, with only one in five bids for funding to UKRI proving successful.   

However, success rates differ massively depending on the type of grant call. For instance, only 70 of 404 applications for responsive-mode funding assessed by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council in March 2025 – the council’s most-recent dataset for panel meetings – won funding. That represents a 17 per cent success rate, although the vast majority of bids were deemed of sufficient quality to be funded.

Last week the organisation’s chief executive Ian Chapman told a parliamentary science committee that the £9 billion-a-year funder was considering asking universities to restrict how many research bids they made under new demand management rules, partly in response to a rising number of AI-assisted applications.

According to its recently published annual report, UKRI made 38 per cent fewer awards in 2025-26 (3,567 in total) than in 2024-25 (5,733) and fewer than half the awards made in 2023-24 (7,606).

jack.grove@timeshighereducation.com