There is no growth without universities
Andy Burnham is almost certainly going to be the next Prime Minister – and he has pledged to make Britain “the innovation nation of the next decade”, with universities at the heart of local economies and a “Number 10 North” driving a devolved state.
The politics are seductive. A government elected on regional renewal, promising that discovery and prosperity will no longer be things that happen to other people's cities, is a government that needs universities more than any administration in living memory. On paper, that is the sector's dream scenario.
But the mechanics matter more than the mood. The UK funds research through a settlement that has evolved over a century: dual support, quality-related funding flowing on the strength of assessment, and project funding won in national competition. Every part of that settlement assumes decisions are made system-wide. Devolution, done carelessly, pulls at each of those threads at once.
Regional allocation of research funding sounds like levelling up. In practice it forces a question nobody in the devolution conversation has yet answered: is research money regional economic policy, or is it national capability policy? Those two purposes point at different institutions, different disciplines, and different definitions of success.
And there is an uncomfortable truth underneath: concentration is partly what makes UK science internationally competitive. The counterargument is not that concentration is fair – it isn't – but that redistribution without design simply produces thinner excellence everywhere, rather than new strength where it's needed.
“It is whether research funding design is in the room when it does.”
There are better models available. North East England's new £22.5m investment fund shows what regionally designed research-to-growth machinery can look like when it is built around actual regional strengths rather than a formula. Universities UK's ambition to double external investment in spinouts points the same way: the growth case for universities is strongest when it is specific.
The question for the sector is not whether devolution is coming – the politics have already decided that. It is whether research funding design is in the room when it does. If the sector waits for the machinery-of-government announcement, it will be too late to shape it.