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Buz Barstow's avatar

Hi James, I really enjoyed this! Please keep it up!

Have you considered doing a post on how we can reform universities?

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James W. Phillips's avatar

Very kind of you to say :) On the latter, it's not on near term horizon.

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Buz Barstow's avatar

I would love to see it if you ever do. Or if you think universities are un-reformable, I would also love to know. I'm trying to figure out what to do with myself after tenure.

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Tom Stafford's avatar

On block funding - in the UK a substantial minority (not quite half) of government research funding is distributed as block funding, to groups of researchers in the form of institutions. https://www.ukri.org/publications/explainer-dual-support-funding-for-uk-research-and-innovation/explainer-dual-support-funding-for-research-and-innovation/

This comes with its own set of side-effects (in the form of REF)...

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James W. Phillips's avatar

Yes agree. However, it isn't controlled in the way specified/outlined by Crawford. For example, its still very much organised by Principal Investigators. I'll add some comments to clarify this, good point!

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