Discrimination by UK Research Councils

How are UK Research Councils still allowed to discriminate against people on the basis of the country they received their university education?

Specifically, the research councils offer funding for people undergoing PhD study.  These awards are usually quite competitive but are the main basis for student funding in many fields, particularly in funding students of junior career staff who are not yet able to attract large multi-year grants that include postgraduate training.  The scholarship will pay the fees, research expenses and stipend of anyone registered for a PhD in a UK university, if - and only if - that person has been resident in the UK for the last three years prior to starting the studentship.

So, eligible candidates are:

• UK or EU citizens who do their undergraduate degree in the UK and move straight to a PhD 
• UK or EU citizens who work in the UK for three years before starting a PhD

Ineligible candidates are:

• UK or EU citizens who do their undergraduate degree in another country (unless they spend three subsequent years hanging around the UK)
• UK or EU citizens who do their undergraduate degree in the UK but then spend time studying, working or travelling in another country
• UK or EU citizens who do a Master's degree (MSc, MRes, etc.) in the UK that takes less than 3 years
• Anyone who's a non-EU citizen

In short, the net effect is that the vast majority of RCUK PhD funding goes to UK citizens who have just finished a degree in a UK university.  British funding for British students, in other words, regardless of this whole open-EU concept and the equation of degree standards across the EU under the Bologna process.  It's highly unusual, in psychology at least, for an RCUK scholarship to go to an EU candidate (where RCUK will pay fees but the stipend has to come from some other source), let alone an international candidate (where the stipend and the difference between EU and international fees - several thousand pounds per year - has to be sourced elsewhere).

Right now, I'm trying to recruit a candidate for a PhD project that will be funded by our faculty.  Most of the faculty funding comes from RCUK sources and thus is subject to all the above conditions, although some scholarships are available with fewer strings attached.  Most of the interest has come from EU countries and there are a couple of excellent candidates that stand head and shoulders above UK applicants, but I am having to fight tooth and nail to be allowed to consider these outstanding candidates.  Yes, our faculty likes to meddle in matters that are far outside their expertise.

 

It used to be worse.  Until a few years ago, being resident in the UK for the purposes of full-time education didn't count as "proper" residency.  It took a French student bringing RCUK to the European Court of Justice in order to get the discriminatory exception removed.  In my opinion, RCUK are still imposing discriminatory rules: anyone who receives their undergraduate degree outside the UK is ineligible for full PhD funding unless they spend three subsequent years living in the UK, whereas anyone who does their undergraduate degree in the UK is immediately eligible for full funding.

Will it take another case in front the European Court of Justice to sort this out?  Or will RCUK realise that maintaining a culturally homogenous postgraduate population in the UK is in nobody's best interest?

Wearing a mask of social science

In the UK, research funding for psychology projects can come from a number of sources.  There are several charities, trusts and other venerable bodies with the funds to give large and small grants to research projects as they see fit.  If you don't mind the bureaucratically-heavy application procedure, the European Union offers research awards.  But there are also the prestigious national government-funded research councils and this is where things get tricky.

Research with a medical bent (cognitive neuroscience with clinical applications, for example) can go to the Medical Research Council (MRC).  Computational angles (cognitive modelling, in particular) can seek funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).  Psychological research that is significantly informed by fields such as linguistics or philosophy can be funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).  Everything else remotely psychology-based - from investigations of how children learn syntax to whether people reason differently about past and future events to which bits of the brain are involved in face perception (none of these projects mine, before you ask) - is expected to go to the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).

Why?  I am not a social scientist.

The ESRC website is full of media-friendly snippets like "What is Social Science" and "How Social Science Affects Our Lives".  One section, "What Social Scientists Do", even lists four representative examples of social scientists (Anthropologist, Economist, International Relations Expert, Sociologist) before stating that:

What distinguishes social scientists in particular is that the drive is underlined by a social conscience - seldom is it research for its own academic sake.

I hardly know where to begin dismantling that statement.  I have quite an active social conscience, thank you very much, which is manifest in my private life to anyone who knows me. My work life, however, is not underlined by this conscience, except for my decision to refuse to cite research that uses animal subjects in what I consider to be unacceptable and unnecessary testing techniques.  (This is based on my own informed judgement, which is apparently more conservative than many ethical boards.)

My biggest issue is with the last clause in the statement: what is wrong with "research for its own academic sake"?  I might expect to see this kind of anti-intellectualism in tabloid opinion columns or point-scoring political debates but I am shocked to encounter it from a body with national responsibility for funding research. Blue sky research - or research that asks big questions of how and why things are the way they are without concern for the immediate application of the results - is central to the spirit of scientific enquiry.  To step up on my soapbox for a moment, the freedom to conduct blue sky research is an important part of the continuing development of a civilisation.

I am proud to be in the "seldom" subgroup that does research for its own academic sake.  My idealistic research motive - the reason I do what I do - is to push the boundaries of the science of the mind.  We, as a species, have a better understanding of the physical functioning of space/time than we do of the brains that allow us to reach this understanding.  We know more about what makes the universe tick than what makes us aware of the answering tock in our own minds.

The ESRC does not appear to feel bound by its own self-description as it regularly funds research projects that are definitely empirical psychology "for its own academic sake".  It is an unwritten rule amongst the academic psychology community in the UK that the "social science" remit of the ESRC is not to be taken seriously and that, since grant applications are usually reviewed within our own community of psychological scientists, blue sky projects will be funded if they represent good science.

But still... to the media, general public, anyone outside the field that encounters an ESRC-funded research project, there is a deliberately-fostered expectation that the research has immediate applications.  An ESRC-funded researcher is always prone to be asked "what's the point?", "who benefits?", "what use is that?"  Do physicists get asked those questions?  Do CERN researchers have to defend (continuously) the validity of their research programmes?  I can't think of an immediate application of the finding that the Higgs boson is not just a theoretical construct, but I'll defend to the death the importance of seeking evidence of its existence.

I am not a social scientist, but I'll continue to wear the mask in public in order to get funding for my work.  Then go back to my secret identity as a scientist.