King's College London newsletter SPECIAL EDITION
Revising the Academic Plan This special edition of Comment has been issued in order co pr07Jide all members of staffwith the text of the paper that was presented to Heads of Department at che briefing meeting on Monday 4 N07Jember. The main paper was prepared by Professor Archur Lucas, Vice-Principal with responsibility for academic planning. This paper contains six sections: 1. Reasons for revision 2. The College planning process
3. Policy underlying planning 4. Producing the options 5. Summary of options 6. Consultation with UFC
and is supported by the following appendices: A. Academic Policy Group: Guiding Principles B. Academic Policy Group: Criteria for constructing Academic Plans C. Preliminary Options (Distribution of numbers of academic staff and of student numbers)
the merger, and its being able to generate small surpluses to reduce the inherited accumulated deficits, the College is no longer fmancially viable. The change in financial outlook has a number of causes: i) The UFC response to our original plan was piecemea~ partly as a reflection of the general decisions neither to expand numbers in London nor to increase national postgraduate research student numbers. We were given part of our requested increase in funded humanities numbers, but funded for fewer than our previous funded numbers in the sciences, particularly postgraduate research students. (It seems that nationally postgraduate research students were distributed broadly in terms of research ratings, most funded research student places going to departments assessed as being strong in research.) The original King's plan was thus distorted in such a way that it produced a deficit budget. The UFC 'safety net' has not compensated for all the loss incurred, and at best is temporary support.
1. Reasons for revision
a) Financial
ii) Government policy to impose a 1.5% 'efficiency gain' per annum, and the expectation that government policy of under-funding nationally agreed salary awards will continue, together impose further pressure. The combined effect of these two pressures is an accumulated 'cut' of roughly 10% in real terms from 1989/90 to 1994/95.
Despite the very good housekeeping that has resulted in King's College having a balanced annual budget for most years since
iii) The transfer of funding for research from the UFC to the Research Councils to take effect in 1991/92 will
one of us wished to be engaged in this exercise so soon after the academic planning exercise of 1989/90. There are two major reasons why a revision is necessary now: financial pressures and changes in the context of higher education.
reduce our research-related general income. The transfer, while neutral in national terms., will increase selectivity of research funding quite dramatically. It will be done by paying an 'overhead' on research council funding, so that only active research council projects will attract money from this source. We have made some substantial improvements in research council income recently, (48.9% bener in 1990/91 than in 1989/ 90 in the non medical area). However, because there are few Research Council grants available in the humanities areas where our highest rated departments are concentrated we expect to lose about ÂŁ1 million per annum in the short term. The combined effect of these national and local factors means that the College must take action if it is not rapidly to fall into insolvency. b) The changing context of higher education The changes required for the financial reasons outlined above must take place in a new, and rapidly changing, educational policy environment. The recent White Paper foreshadows major changes in structure, with the erasure of the 'binary line' leading to polytechnics and universities being funded on the same basis, with separate decisions for research and for teaching. The research element in universities funding, currently about 35% of total income, is expected to be awarded selectively, based on research selectivity exercises which in 1992 will be extended to polytechnics that wish to enter costs centres for assessment and subsequent funding.