Chancellor’s Spending Review: Chartered ABS Chair responds
The Chartered Association of Business Schools has responded to the Chancellor's Spending Review and Autumn Statement.
Professor Simon Collinson, Chair of the Chartered Association of Business Schools said: "I was happy to see a flat cash settlement for the Research Councils overall. This is a good outcome given the 17% cuts announced to the overall Department Business, Innovation and Skills budget.
“We note the commitment to take forward the recommendations made in last week’s Nurse Review. Of particular interest is the introduction of the new body – Research UK – and the intention “to strengthen collaboration between the research base and the commercialisation of discoveries in the business community”, which we welcome. The Chartered ABS has been highlighting for some time the value that business school research can bring to realising returns on the investment made in STEM and other areas of research. We look forward to discussing with Government, Research Councils, Innovate UK and our partners in other HE disciplines to identify the role business schools can play in a collaborative effort to help take discoveries from the ‘laboratory’ to the marketplace.
"It is for these reasons, that whilst we recognise the importance to our economy of the investment in Science which has been protected today, that we have long called for funding in business and management research to be factored into how STEM research is funded and undertaken.
"On our postgraduate courses, we will be interested to see the impact of the lifting of the age cap on new loans to postgraduates and the introduction of new loads for postgraduate Master’s degrees.
"We are concerned that the cuts to student opportunity funding may have potentially detrimental impact on the progress we have made towards widening access and social mobility. We await to see how this will be addressed through the work of the Director of Fair Access.
"We note with some concern that the government will reduce the teaching grant by £120 million in cash terms by 2019-20, but we hope that anticipated measures from the new Teaching Excellence Framework will allow universities to offset these cuts through increased fees linked to their teaching performance.
"We hope that the Apprenticeship levy will help make the new Chartered Management Apprenticeship Degree a success, which a number of our members are involved in delivering.
"We await further detail on the plans that sit behind the measures outlined today, and will respond specific issues in consultation with our members.”
A copy of the Spending Review is available here https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/spending-review-and-autumn-statement-2015-documents/spending-review-and-autumn-statement-2015
