what has government got to do with it, the universities are independent arent they? though the point is probably true, there are too many. interesting they dont understand the concept that research and teaching is dependant on funding, and if there is lower quality output from strikes that is not going to increase any time soon.
Not at all.
We get money (i) directly from the government (tax payer) based on our research, assessed by a process called REF (research excellence framework). It measures our grant income (we get our research funded by charities like the BHF, and by the taxpayer again, via the MRC) and our research outputs (mainly the pervceived importance of journals where we publish our research), and (ii) directly from the government based on our teaching (measured using its own imputs such as NSS data - see my post above) via TEF (teaching excellence framework). We don't generate much if any money of our own, although I think we get to keep the proceeds if we flog off buildings, as we have done, but his is all 'overseen' by government. We can't flog a building then piss the money up on coke and hookers. Essentially if we can't get enough dosh from REF and TEF we have to cut staff.
We binned lots of staff a few years ago for 'not meeting expectations'. Here we run into trouble. Our college is run by administrators who are actually psychopathic-spectrum former academics who have drifted into senior management. They make up assessment rules as they go along. Just as my departments (I have two, one for teaching and one for research) change their names every two years, the rules governing my continued employment change ever few years, and when they do we don't hear about it till later.
When we had a cull of staff a few years ago we had just ben busting a gut to publish our research so it would count for REF and many of us had neglected to apply for new grants (still surviving well enough on money raised 2 or more years prior. Guess what? The college decided to sack staff with insufficient teaching hours plus no new grant icome in the previous 12 months. That's it - no other factors considered. My teaching hours are massive, yet I and many were shitting it and quite depressed about it all (fancy that). A colleague of mine with modest hours, but a big research group, several million squid of current funding, but no new grant icome, spent 3 months with lawyers fighting to keep her job. I don't even like her very much but I was really sorry to see the state she got into.
That's the way we roll in the higher education sector - poachers turned psychotic gamekeepers calling the tune, shitting on their own, using arbitratrary rules, and meanwhile kissassing the government.
The next academic colleague who should know better who uses the term 'winning a grant' is going to get a very hard punch in the face off me. Metaphorically speaking, of course.