No grants then not ‘research active’

[Redundancygirl]

I am a senior lecturer in a Russell group uni. I have been working there for 20 years. I have an ok publication record and my last major grant finished in 2018.

I had an ‘informal meeting’ with my newly appointed boss earlier this week who said that I must obtain some grant funding or I was in danger of being re-classified as teaching-only. My university has now decided that unless you have grant funding then you are classified as not research active. I did submit a major grant in 2019 - got to final stage but it was unfunded.

I feel absolutely defeated and exhausted. I have 3 kids & have worked flat out for the last year. No appreciation from my uni about this and how difficult it has been. Am I over-reacting to feel upset and stressed? How do I re-group and get it together? Thanks.

I am so sorry to hear that this is happening to you. No advice really, other than to say that the same thing happened at my place (not Russel Group, but huge aspirations) too a few years ago. Once the scores in the staff survey fell down to the bottom of the pit and really good people started leaving (and a new VC came), the culture really changed to be much more supportive. Sorry I can't help with your actual problem though!

My university has now decided that unless you have grant funding then you are classified as not research active.

Across all disciplines? I don't think even in top global universities all research active academics would have grant funding. The fraction with funding would be quite low in areas such as humanities, social sciences, etc.

Understandable to feel upset and stressed. Whatever subject area you are in there should not be pressure to get grants in the middle of a pandemic. Expectations for funding do depend strongly on subject area, though. In some areas people really need funding to carry on with their research (e.g. lab based research) while in areas such as those above it would be ridiculous to classify somebody as research inactive just because of no active grants.

Thanks both. Yes I’m in social sciences and don’t need a research grant to undertake research and publish. They basically have also withdrawn all consumables money for those without research grants - ie, no attending conferences as no money etc. Not sure how international collaborations and research are supposed to continue with no funds. I’m afraid for my University it’s just another example of staff being treated poorly. They have previously gone to compulsory redundancies based on publication records so perhaps I shouldn’t be too surprised.

This is why people leave academia in droves. It’s why I left. 4 years of work then a year wasted frantically putting departmental grant proposals together, and the constant smaller applications which if you don’t get there’s no money to pay staff.

No help o/p, but it’s shit and I sympathise.

Also at a RG uni. Genuinely interested - where does your funding come from if you don't have an active grant?

@DuchessSilver

Also at a RG uni. Genuinely interested - where does your funding come from if you don't have an active grant?

I am in a social sciences project. A lot of projects can be done on the cheap. Participants e.g. are not normally paid for interviews. Transcription is a possible cost, but Covid and interviewing via Zoom / Teams has helped as you get an editable transcript ready made. I don't normally need research assistants for my work either (although they are nice to have of course). Others' colleagues research is very book-based. It is genuinely possible, although even small pots of funding really help.

not project, subject. Argh!

But in terms of your time, how is that funded?

Currently funded permanent post through university. I have a high teaching load & have expectations in terms of research. Most research can be done cheaply by using credits for participation + using little pots of money to obtain participant payments or the odd bit of equipment. There are project running costs associated with my undergraduate and postgraduate students, that we used to use (no longer given any funds to facilitate project running!).

Thanks for answering. If your post is funded with the expectation that you'll undertake research then it does seem unfair to change your status based on grant funding. I wish you every success fighting it.

@DuchessSilver

Thanks for answering. If your post is funded with the expectation that you'll undertake research then it does seem unfair to change your status based on grant funding. I wish you every success fighting it.

Most academic posts are funded on that basis surely? There aren't enough grants to go round for one - certainly not in non-STEM. Universities are supposed to encourage research! Especially research-intensives.

And that they've done this after you've been REF submitted.

Most academic posts are funded on that basis surely? There aren't enough grants to go round for one - certainly not in non-STEM.

Not just in humanities and social sciences - most people in maths & other theoretical STEM wouldn't have more than a small fraction on grants on average, even in the very top UK departments.

On the other hand, it has been the case in my field that there is no departmental funding for conference attendance for years - this is not new.

Actually, as a senior academic in a world leading UK university, I'm not aware of any department in my university in which all or most academics are funding their research time from grants. Not least because grants lose money as UKRI only covers 80% of costs & those with high fractions on grants also tend to be working in areas with high facilities costs, so their grant recovery is actually significantly below 80%.

I think it is well known that international students and profits from catering, accommodation etc are subsidising research across the whole UK HE sector.

Almost everyone in my department is (allied to medicine) - we charge the facilities costs to our grants. But it is absurd to judge humanities / social sciences by standards set in STEM with our very large available pots of money

But do you really cover all the costs? Most engineering and applied science departments as well as medicine/allied subjects run substantial losses on TRAC.

It's accurate but a bit misleading to say you are 1.0 FTE on grants, if the actual grants only cover 80%. Recovery on the non-staff part of the grant is even lower than 80% usually, and that's without capital costs.

AFAIK all Russell Group (heavily research active) medical departments run at multi-million pound losses.

This links to the OP in that one has to look at the whole economy of a department. Social sciences departments typically don't have large research income, but they can have good teaching income & they don't have large costs. It's usually perfectly affordable for them to cover research time for their staff from net profits from teaching international students.

Departments that have larger research income can actually run at much larger losses, due to issues of FEC.

Yes, I understand that. I was replying to the bit where you said ‘I’m not aware of any department... in which academics are funding most of their time on grants’.

How our department survives is a continual mystery. According to what the finance bods tell us we should have gone bust decades ago

We don’t even teach

Well that is ridiculous and an impossible bar. Such a small percentage of Hums and SocSci research can be funded. There is pressure on us, quite prestigious but not RG, to apply but we are not judged poorly if we don't get it. I would name s d Shane them on Twitter. It is just not reasonable.

i'm in a similar position & it is miserable.

my only advice would be to look for 'easy' grants to apply for. not the major ones, but small quirky foundations or collaborations with people in other departments or any little things that might keep your research 'active'.

do you have PhD students? do you have any options to get one?

Wow, that really sucks. I hate how things are so much on a "the best get better" track: if you have funding, you can go conferences and make connections, (sometimes) get out of teaching, have time to research and get preliminary data, write new proposals, etc. Without grants you're supposed to somehow magic up preliminary data and proposals without time and without funding.

I have a friend in the US in a "soft money" department - all academics there have to get their full salary from grants. If she doesn't have enough grants to cover her salary, she loses her job. It's massively stressful, and at any one point in time she always has 5-6 proposals in preparation. I'm really glad we're not in that situation, but stories like this make me worry the UK could head there...

"If she doesn't have enough grants to cover her salary, she loses her job."

wow. primary reason i would not be heading to the US.

On another note OP, if the expectation is that you are research active, then cutting of conference funds is counterintuitive, not to mention it creates a poor-get-poorer phenomenon where you are robbed of your networking and research showcase, leading to even less recognition and funding possibility. I would challenge that with your new boss. In business schools it is unusual to bring in grant funding, and research is done by the senior academic and a handful of PhDs. People who publish are considered research active, surely this should be the metric and not funding as it differs so much between disciplines?

fondip - it does tend to be field-specific. Medical-related fields that can be funded by NIH have it occur more, NSF-funded science can only get "summer salary" - although there are Universities that only give you 10 months worth of salary and expect you to make up the remaining 2 from grants, and you just get less money if you don't have grants.

wow. primary reason i would not be heading to the US

Not just a US thing. In my field grants are anything between 1 and 5 years. Once your grant is up you’re looking for a new job, or trying to get new funding.

It’s how cancer research and all those big charities work. They only fund scientists in grants, they don’t actually employ anyone.

This is true of sciences in many universities here, including Oxford and Cambridge. After your first fellowship, if you don’t get a senior fellowship you lose your job (5 or 6 years into a faculty post)

I am 11 years post PhD and a university has never covered my salary, not for one month. I have always earned it from grants. I am not unusual for subjects allied to medicine