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Andrew Hamilton, Oxford University’s vice chancellor warns that the UK could lose top academics and students overseas unless the government ramps up research funding Cuts to government funding of universities mean the UK is now “treading water” and risks losing top academics and students to its international competitors, the vice chancellor of Oxford University has warned. Professor Andrew Hamilton said that while public expenditure on higher education was growing in China and the US, the share of GDP spent on UK universities dropped from 1.3% to 1.2% in the last year. Other governments are “ramping up investment in higher education, particularly for research”, he told academics at his annual oration on Tuesday. Harvard receives 80% of its research income from the state, while Oxford receives just over 40%. China is investing billions of pounds in creating 100 top universities this century. Hamilton said it often took many years for research to reap rewards and accused ministers of impatience. Funding postgraduate research “doesn’t always sit easily with short-term political imperatives”, he said. But without postgraduates, “many of the roots of our research would soon wither or die”. He also attacked what he saw as over-zealous rules on overseas postgraduates and academics entering the UK. The new restrictions pose “serious risks, both scholarly and academic”, he said. Hamilton said the UK was particularly poor at funding postgraduate students, whohe described as “the engine of ground-breaking experimentation”. A growing number of universities abroad provide “five-star packages” for almost all their doctoral students, he said. But at Oxford, fewer than one in every three postgraduate in a social science or humanities field receives a full scholarship. On average, just half of all the university’s postgraduates do. He said this was forcing many of the finest students to turn down offers for postgraduate work at his institution. “Sadly there are too many examples of Oxford losing bright graduate students to overseas universities because of the funding gap,” he said. In particular, bright doctoral students from low or average income homes could be deprived of the chance to further their research, he warned. This is particularly unfair because in some fields, having a master’s or PhD is now a necessity, he said. “Postgraduate funding is hardly equitable or likely to promote social mobility” at the moment, he said. “It is time for a fresh look at it. “It is striking … that there is nothing in the UK that can compare with the US government’s federal loans scheme, to enable graduate students to finance their study. “It is hard to escape the logic … if this competitive disadvantage in funding is not addressed, the UK higher education sector will increasingly lose out to its international competitors on the recruitment of the best students and academics.” Hamilton was a chemistry professor and provost of Yale University in the US before returning to the UK in 2009. He said he would not yet talk about next autumn’s fees of £9,000 for undergraduates because it was a year away. “There would be time and place aplenty as we get a better handle on the likely consequences, intended and unintended,” he said. University funding Research Higher education University of Oxford Postgraduates Students Tuition fees Jessica Shepherd guardian.co.uk