the economic and social research council (ESRC) 1+3 funding model
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Abstract The ESRC 1 þ 3 funding model represents a major reform to postgraduate training in the United Kingdom. To ensure universities produce graduates with an adequate skills base, the programme prescribes a set of research methods and general and transferable skills, and restricts funding to institutions with accredited programmes. Although applications for places on accredited PhD programmes remain strong, one possible disadvantage is the potential concentration of funding among a small number of UK institutions.
Keywords
doctoral training; ESRC; UK higher education; research funding; skills training
REMEDYING THE SKILLS GAP
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n 2001, the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC),1 the UK’s principal research funding and training agency concerned with the social sciences, introduced a radical new approach to funding postgraduate study. This effort aimed to address the agency’s growing concern about the lack of appropriate scientific skills evident in much UK research. For some time, emphasis on these types of skills had been downplayed. This was most clear under the Thatcher administration, which refused to accept the notion that the study of any aspect of society could
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be ‘scientific’. Indeed, that administration’s renaming of the ESRC in the mid-1980s, which had previously been known as the Social Science Research Council, was symptomatic of its rejection of a scientific approach to social analysis. Regardless of prevailing ideas about how ‘scientific’ social science research can be, the ESRC identified some years ago a so-called ‘methodological gap’, which referred to the perceived lack of rigorous training throughout most of the UK social sciences in basic quantitative and qualitative research skills, notable most obviously at the level of postgraduate research training. This deficiency was directly associated with a declining
european political science: 4 2005 (118 – 125) & 2005 European Consortium for Political Research. 1680-4333/05 $30 www.palgrave-journals.com/eps
research capacity in most of the UK social sciences. The evidence adduced for such concern was three-fold:
Various social science user communities, such as Whitehall (the British government administration), the Scottish Executive and the Welsh Assembly, have become increasingly concerned at the lack of appropriately skilled social science researchers and economists available to engage in analysis and research. The UK was seen to be falling behind its European neighbours with regard to the skills base it provides to social science graduates emanating from its PhD programmes. This was most obviously reflected in the increasing number of social science appointments made in UK universities that were going to overseas-trained researchers. The ESRC itself was becoming increasingly concerned that some of its major programmes and research centres were finding it difficult to complete some research projects for lack of appropriately or adequately skilled staff – above all in regard to quantitative methods.
In response, the ESR
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