At UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), we feel immense pride knowing that our funding helps thousands of students undertake new and exciting research every year. We applaud the effort that students put in, and indeed the contribution to their success made by their supervisors, project partners, university staff and many others.
We also respect that – whether you’re studying for a PhD, DPhil, professional doctorate, a MRes or any other postgraduate research (PGR) – life studying can be tough. This is one of the reasons that UKRI committed to work with the government and the higher education sector to give PGR students better support.
In that vein, in 2023 we published a plan of the things that we would do by 2025 to improve student support. Now just over the one-year mark, I’m really pleased to provide some updates on the key areas that we have been working on.
Working with students and the sector
At the heart of the new deal for PGR has always been the voice of students and the staff who support them. That’s why we started the work with a call for input. Our councils too, when they reviewed their own investments, spoke to many students, supervisors, and other stakeholders to hear their first hand experiences.
This is also why we commissioned the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Caucus (known as EDICa) to talk to students about the impact the current level of support was having on them. One hundred and thirteen students, former students, and people who had decided against pursuing their doctoral education, took part in that study.
Based on all that work, we have been redrafting our terms and conditions for training grants. These are the main rules that govern how we fund research organisations and set out what funding we allow to be drawn from the grant in support of students.
Supporting equality, diversity and inclusion
In revising our training grant conditions, our aim is to ensure that the research organisations we fund are empowered to provide support to students with a wide variety of needs, and are also accountable if the support isn’t given. We intend to emphasise that all PGR students must be treated in a way that is transparent and fair with clear processes for students to feedback and (where necessary) make complaints.
To support research organisations to provide the best support for UKRI students we will be improving our provision for medical and family leave and reforming our support for disabled students, among other measures.
Before the summer we convened a group of experts from within research organisations to review the proposals to check our assumptions and help us ensure that the changes will be effective. Their input has been very helpful. We will be finalising our proposals over the next couple of months.
Once we have done so, we will publish the EDICa report, a statement setting out the changes and annotated revisions to the training grant conditions. We will give research organisations enough time to implement the changes for the start of the 2025 to 2026 academic year.
Our reforms will ultimately build on other excellent work, much of it led by colleagues in research organisations. We highlighted some of this work in January this year in the UKRI good practice principles in recruitment and training at doctoral level.
Financial support
Since 2022, we have prioritised additional funding to support stipends, keeping them in line with rising inflation as forecast by the Office of Budget Responsibility. Between then and the start of the 2024 to 2025 academic year, the minimum stipend has increased by 23% in cash terms.
We also committed to reviewing how stipends are set in the future. We are immensely grateful to colleagues in the sector who are helping us with this review, including those who were asked to provide more data to us. We intend to issue an update on this work and on the stipend for 2025 to 2026 in January.
This year we’ve also been talking to research organisations about the other financial components of support for students, exploring what in higher education is called the ‘full economic cost’ of doctoral training. There is more work to do in this area. Many of the institutions who have participated in this work over the last year have indicated they have different approaches to costing PGR. This can make comparisons between institutions tricky. It also gives us cause to think about the way we fund PGR, to make sure that our schemes remain fit for the future. This is an issue we’ll be returning to over the next year.
Training experience
Ultimately, all of this work is seeking to ensure that students are able to fully participate in their research, qualify, and go on to a full range of exciting careers. With that in mind, in January we published a new statement of expectations for doctoral training setting out our ambitions for the PGR we support. We want:
- a flexible, inclusive, and supportive environment which optimises the student experience and the diversity of the student population to strengthen the quality of the research
- a holistic approach to doctoral training and development that delivers high quality doctoral research, integrating in-depth subject knowledge, research and methodological skills, and wider technical development opportunities
- researchers who are prepared to operate across interdisciplinary, collaborative, and challenge-led environments
- globally competitive researchers, able to use their skills to thrive across a range of sectors and careers
The first funding opportunities using the new statement of expectations have now closed and we expect students to start on them from October 2025.
While we set out or expectations for new training grants, elsewhere The Next Generation Research SuperVision Project is looking to transform culture and practice in research supervision. With funding from Research England, the research councils, Wellcome and the Crick Institute, the project is now working with over 50 research organisations and going from strength to strength.
We also committed to working with CRAC-Vitae to review the current provision of careers learning for PGRs to identify how careers learning and skills development during PGR in the UK could be enhanced commissioning. Their think piece on careers learning for PGRs has been published on the CRAC website. We hope this will spur further consideration in the sector about how we can ensure that PGR students have diverse and flexible career paths.
Thank you!
This is, of course, just a snapshot of what we and others in the sector have been up to in the past year. Many other activities have taken place, and we continue to focus our resources on ensuring that PGR students get the support that they need.
So, the only remaining thing to say is thank you – to the many students, research organisation staff and others who continue to collaborate with us on this essential work.
Top image: Credit: FatCamera, E+ via Getty Images