UK universities’ civic role ‘held back by stop-start funding’

UK universities play an indispensable local role in advancing the government’s growth strategies, but their impact is currently stymied by short-term funding, a report says.

The Local Policy Innovation Partnership Hub, led by a team at the University of Birmingham, says universities “increasingly act as anchor institutions” for tackling inequality, and strengthening regional governance and economic activity.

This increasing role for higher education is credited in part to regional devolution, with the creation and expansion of combined authorities and the rise of directly elected mayors.

But long-term investment is necessary to ensure universities working on civic engagement can “significantly improve the local delivery of government missions”, says the report, published on 8 September.

At the moment, the funding environment remains “very unstable” and creates “vulnerability” in the system that was meant to be furthering the UK's research and innovation goals.

Penned by Bec Riley, co-director of the City-Region Economic Development Institute (City-REDI) at Birmingham, the report suggests six approaches “capture the spectrum of activity” in the collaboration between universities and policy goals.

The model identifies approaches from “civic-embedded regional development institutes” – which focus on local government and economic growth – to single policy issue institutes, in the form of research-intensive centres dedicated to exploring one key national or regional question.

Interdisciplinary public policy thinktanks based in universities are charged with investigating “complex societal challenges” through a number of disciplines – with examples including the Bennett School of Public Policy at the University of Cambridge – while civic engagement and public policy institutes emphasise social equity and public participation by co-creating policy with people in the local area.

In contrast, networked regional policy collaboratives exist as “multi-institutional partnerships”, coordinating academic and policy engagement across regions, “often through fellowships, labs, and shared platforms”.

And translational policy communication platforms work to translate academic research into “accessible formats” for policymakers, enhancing visibility, relevance and uptake – in the form of something like the University of Manchester’s Policy@Manchester.

To produce the typology, the study looked at issues including how long-term investment and local knowledge impacted success.

It finds that while models create similar material – academic papers, policy briefings, thought leadership, and events – the “method, scale and funding of delivery can be very different”.

Most models incorporate funding from a variety of sources, but the level of investment differs considerably across institutions.

“Larger institutes are more likely to have philanthropic investments, which may point to greater assurance of success when an individual/foundation is investing in research capability,” the paper notes.

And failing civic engagement is almost always connected to cash flow, pointing to the Centre for Sustainable, Healthy and Learning Cities and Neighbourhoods (SHLC) at the University of Glasgow as an example.

Established with “significant” funding from the Economic and Social Research Council, the centre produced research on urban sustainability and education – but since losing the grant has “effectively ceased to function as an active research institute”.

Commenting on her report, Riley said: “The institutes best placed to make a lasting contribution are those with deep local knowledge, the trust of local institutions and the ability to follow a problem from evidence through to delivery and evaluation.

“Those capabilities are built over years. When funding repeatedly starts and stops, expertise can be lost, partnerships weaken and the next programme is forced to rebuild foundations that should already be there.”

georgia.luckhurst@timeshighereducation.com