HASS research essential to embed innovation in the UK economy
Universities UK’s Blueprint for change - published now to press the incoming Labour government to make securing the HE sector a policy priority - makes a powerful case for the contribution of the Humanities & Social Sciences to a Research & Development strategy that truly enables sustained economic growth and social improvement.
The Blueprint – which is titled Opportunity, Growth and Partnership – calls for the creation of a new public funding stream to build on and extend the achievement of the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund (ISCF): a Missions Innovation Fund (MIF) to facilitate fresh collaborations between academic researchers, business and industry driven by interdisciplinary teams ‘including the Humanities and Social Sciences’ whose vital role is to engage with the ‘adoption and diffusion’ of industrial and technological transformations and their ‘societal impact’.
The MIF is the lead recommendation of the advisory group convened to address the challenge, ‘A world-leading research and innovation system’, one of eight which Dame Sally Mapstone, UUK’s President, argues must be overcome ‘to ensure that higher education is able to deliver for the nation into the 2030s’. Heading the group was ‘Commissioner’, Lord Mandelson, who served as Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills under the last Labour government (2008-2010). Commissioners recruited to direct discussion of the further challenges identified in the Blueprint included others with expertise in economic policy and commercial and industrial practice such as Rain Newton-Smith, Director General of the CBI and Andrew Haldane, former Chief Economist of the Bank of England.
For a ‘high innovation’ economy to flourish in the UK, the advisors argue, the intensity of our R&D must be increased and its delivery improved. Given the ever-rising pressure on public finance, Mandelson maintains that universities ‘must meet government half-way’, and ‘engage in research and innovation in line with their strengths and build critical mass in major areas of scientific discovery’. Universities must back what they are best at and not spread their resources to thinly, in the narrow self-interest of internal competition and short-term student recruitment targets.
But the advisors are clear this must not stifle ‘cross-pollination between disciplines’ or unsettle the advances the sector is making in creating a culture of interdisciplinarity: ‘Interdisciplinary practice…is vital to addressing societal challenges’ and it ensures the ‘dynamism of the system as a whole, which allows new research leaders to emerge’.
Above all, they explain that theirs is not a charter for STEMM concentration: ‘the necessary research [in computing, automotive engineering and life science] must be teamed with the ‘social sciences and humanities research [to] ascertain the social effects, facilitate innovation uptake and underpin sound policy decisions.’
Perhaps inevitably, press coverage of the Blueprint has highlighted its recommendations for raising student tuition fees but the principles to sets out for multidiscipline R&D and the promise of its prospective Missions Innovation Fund merit equal attention.
James Clark, Director of SCI
