£1 billion income from contract research in 2010/11

HESA electronic publication 'HE Business and Community Interaction Survey 2010/11' released today

Results of the 2010/11 HE Business and Community Interaction Survey, published today, show that UK Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) made £1.1 billion through research contracts with businesses and non-commercial organisations. A further £1.4 billion of income was derived from consultancy contracts, facilities and equipment, CPD courses, intellectual property, and regeneration and development programmes.

The table below shows the value of these and other sources broken down by type of business and organisation where appropriate:

Collaborative research

Non-public sources also contributed an additional £200 million to research via collaborative research involving public funding. These are research projects funded by a combination of public and private non-academic sources.

The table below shows the breakdown of funding sources for collaborative research in 2010/11:

Spin-off companies

The survey results also show the number of spin-off companies associated with UK HEIs started in 2010/11. Over 200 spin-offs were started with some HEI ownership and over 2,500 graduate start-up companies were formed in 2010/11:

HE-BCI publication

HE Business and Community Interaction Survey 2010/11 contains the full results of the 2010/11 survey for every HE institution. The publication includes the qualitative responses from Part A of the survey, as well as quantitative data from Part B (from which the above tables are drawn). HE Business and Community Interaction Survey 2010/11 is available to purchase and instantly download from http://www.hesa.ac.uk/pubs/hebci.

A schedule of HESA releases for 2012 can be found here: www.hesa.ac.uk/pubs_schedule

Notes for Editors

1. Press enquiries should be directed to:

   Simon Kemp
   HESA Press Officer
   01242 211120
   pressoffice@hesa.ac.uk
   95 Promenade, Cheltenham, GL50 1HZ.

2. HESA data is collected from all publicly funded Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in the UK, plus the University of Buckingham, which is a non-publicly-funded institution. The HE-BCI Survey is mandatory for HEIs in England, Northern Ireland and Wales, excluding The University of Wales (central functions). The HE-BCI Survey is not mandatory for HEIs in Scotland, although the Scottish Funding Council (SFC) strongly advise that HEIs in Scotland return it. The HE-BCI Survey will become mandatory for Scottish institutions from 2011/12. In 2010/11, three institutions in Scotland did not submit HE-BCI data. The 2009/10 HE-BCI data covers 161 HEIs (131 in England, 10 in Wales, 16 in Scotland and 4 in Northern Ireland).


3. The Higher Education Business and Community Interaction Survey (HE-BCI) is the main vehicle for measuring the volume and direction of interactions between UK Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and business and the wider community. The survey collects information on the infrastructure, capacity and strategy of HEIs, and also numeric and financial data regarding third stream activity (that is, activities concerned with the generation, use, application and exploitation of knowledge and other university capabilities outside academic environments, and distinct from core activities of teaching and research).


4. Some variations in the data between years may be due to availability of information from independent spin-off and start-up companies, and changes in HEIs’ reporting practices.


5. Two institutions in England reported a significant number of spin-offs in error. Their spin-off figures have been excluded from the England and UK totals.


6. The survey has collected data for each academic year from 1999/2000, with HESA undertaking the survey since 2008/09. From 1999/2000 to 2007/08 the survey was undertaken, and its results published, by HEFCE: http://www.hefce.ac.uk/whatwedo/kes/measureke/hebci/


7. The data in this release relates to all UK HE institutions. Figures for the individual nations of the UK are available in the Annex below: England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland.


8. Further headline survey results are published on the Free Statistics Online HE-BCI page.


9. HESA cannot accept responsibility for any inferences or conclusions derived from the data by third parties.


10. Definitions of the terms used in this press release can be found on-line here: www.hesa.ac.uk/intros/hebcidefs1011.

Annex - equivalent tables for England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland

England

Wales

Scotland

Northern Ireland