The importance of quality in austere times: University competitiveness and grant income

After 2009 many governments implemented austerity measures, often restricting science funding. Did such restrictions further skew grant income towards elite scientists and universities? And did increased competition for funding undermine participation? UK science funding agencies significantly reduced numbers of grants and total grant funding in response to austerity, but surprisingly restrictions of science funding were relaxed after the 2015 general election. Exploiting this natural experiment, we show that conventional measures of university competitiveness are poor proxies for competitiveness. An alternative measure of university competitiveness, drawn from complexity science, captures the highly dynamical way in which universities engage in scientific subjects. Building on a data set of 43,430 UK funded grants between 2006 and 2020, we analyse rankings of UK universities and investigate the effect of research competitiveness on grant income. When austerity was relaxed in 2015 the elasticity of grant income w.r.t. research competitiveness fell, reflecting increased effort by researchers at less competitive universities. These scientists increased number and size of grant applications, increasing grant income. The study reveals how funding agencies, facing heterogeneous competitiveness in the population of scientists, affect research effort across the distribution of competitiveness.