HEFCE Announce Budget

The Higher Education Funding Council for England has provisionally announced universities and colleges will be allocated £7,356 million in funding for the 2010-11 academic year. The grant is to be distributed across teaching, research, capital and related activities, with the bulk of the funding at £4727 million allocated for sustained teaching overheads.
The total however is a £449 million reduction from the last financial years grant (1 April 09 to 31 March 10). The board’s approach in managing these cuts is to minimise across-the-board reductions to ensure institutions have maximum flexibility to pursue their own priorities and to maintain the quality of provision.
HEFC has pledged a commitment to help institutions realise the goals in ‘Higher Ambitions: the future of universities in a knowledge economy’ and have safeguarded funding to support science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) projects in order to achieve this. In addition HEFC have reserved £294 million for special funding for national programmes and initiatives and £150 million for the Higher Education Innovation Fund (HEIF), with the intention to forge stronger relationships with other public and third party sectors.
Sir Alan Langlands, Chief Executive of HEFCE explained 'These are testing times but higher education has benefited from substantial growth over the past 10 years, and we should continue to aim for the very best within available resources. UK higher education generates nearly £60 billion for the economy with a multiplier effect of 3:1 from public investment. It clearly makes sense for the Government to take full account of this in setting priorities for the effective use of public funding in future spending rounds.'