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Call to reward lecturers for industrial reseacrh

A The Engineering Council product story
Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team Feb 27, 2001

The Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) is being urged to reward universities which make it easier for engineering and technology lecturers to spend time on industrial research

The Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) is being urged to reward universities which make it easier for engineering and technology lecturers to spend time and be properly paid for doing industrial research.

The call came from the Engineering Council in response to HEFCE plans to allocate an extra £370 million over three years to universities to help improve staff recruitment, retention and development.

Research for the Bett enquiry in 1999 highlighted engineering as an area of higher education where there are particular problems in both recruiting and retaining staff.

Malcolm Shirley, the Engineering Council's Director General, is pressing HEFCE to give some of the money to universities which develop strategies to encourage staff to undertake significant consultancies with industrial companies.

Mr Shirley said, "In engineering, higher education salaries simply cannot compete with those which industry will offer to able researchers, especially in developing areas of technology.

"Academic staff do research for industry, but they often have to do it in addition to their normal duties.

Universities should be prepared and able to let staff switch between full and part-time contracts, in order to take up research consultancies for industry and be properly rewarded for it.

"Their academic careers and employment rights should not suffer because of this.

Universities can only benefit from doing this, and if they don't do it they will find it increasingly hard to attract or retain top quality academic staff.

We are urging HEFCE to reward universities which develop strategies to do this," he added.

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