UA work on the future of EU structural funds has been featured in a Telegraph article focusing on a report published by the Education Select Committee on the impact of leaving the EU.
The report, Exiting the EU: challenges and opportunities for higher education, was published following an inquiry by the Education Committee earlier this year. Read our response to the Committee’s report here.
The Telegraph’s coverage examines how universities will no longer be able to draw funds from the European Structural and Investment Funds.
“But since the UK is a “net contributor” to these funds, the Government could set up its own regional growth fund after Brexit which “could easily exceed” the amount of investment that universities traditionally received from the EU,” Camilla Turner, Education Editor, writes in the article.
It quoted from our written evidence to the Select Committee – “that the ERDF and ESF hand out around £100 million each year in British universities to fund projects promoting enterprise and growth in their local area. But if the Government set up a new fund, far more could be invested in universities.”
You can read our written evidence to the inquiry is available online here. Alliance Vice-Chancellors gave oral evidence to the Education Select Committee in January 2017 as part of the inquiry. Professor John Latham, Chair of University Alliance and Vice-Chancellor of Coventry University, and Professor Alistair Fitt, Vice-Chancellor of Oxford Brookes University and the Alliance’s research lead, both shared their thoughts on the implications for the sector. The transcript and video are online here.
In August 2016, University Alliance published a blog for Wonkhe on the significance of EU structural funds to the UK HE sector.
