If in Scotland some form of block grant for teaching is maintained, as I believe it should be, then after 2013 the Scottish Funding Council will have a more substantial funding role than will HEFCE. But that makes it all the more important to challenge the rather glib phrases in the Green Paper about directing research funding to ‘national priorities’. If Scotland wants high-quality research done in its universities then it must allow the scholars and scientists in those universities to decide what the intellectually interesting and important areas of research are in each field or sub-field.
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