At our #VitaeCon2025 online conference, an audience member in the final panel on ‘Future-Proofing Researcher Development: Policy Perspectives on Economic Sustainability in HE’ posed a question I’ve been mulling over: what is positive here? It was a fair question, particularly given that the tone of the panel contrasted with uplifting discussions on such topics as the RDF refresh, creativity, impact, and AI during the previous two days. In response, panellists pointed to collaboration as signalling opportunities, but this on its own didn’t feel wholly satisfactory. Given that collaboration is often associated with efficiencies and redundancies, what is there, genuinely, to be positive about?
The question feels more urgent given recent research from Universities UK, in collaboration with the Campaign for Science and Engineering (CaSE) and the Association of Research Managers and Administrators (ARMA) on the impacts of financial constraints on UK universities. The report reveals broad sector consensus about the severity of the crisis, pointing to survey results that indicate how 19% of universities have reduced their academic research activity, with 79% considering future reductions. Perhaps most worrying, 48% are choosing not to bid for research funding, with many restricting applications even for charity funding. When nearly half of universities are avoiding funding applications, we’re looking at potential long-term damage to research capacity and career opportunities.
Our CEDARS 2025 survey, gathering insights from 13,334 researchers and managers across 53 UK institutions, shows how these institutional pressures translate into individual uncertainty. While 71% report good job satisfaction and 72% feel included in their immediate research environment, only 40% feel their future at their institution is secure. Even among research and teaching staff with permanent contracts (94%), just 46% agree their future is secure. This disconnect suggests employment security concerns extend beyond individual contract arrangements to reflect broader institutional and sector-wide anxieties.
So where, if anywhere, might the opportunities or space for optimism lie? One #VitaeCon2025 session, ‘Doing more with less: practical ways to deliver researcher development on a budget’, offered some answers. The University of Liverpool’s Researcher Development and Culture Team, working with their Research Staff Association (RSA), has developed co-creation approaches where research staff directly plan and run development activities. Their support model relies heavily on peer-led, community-based events: monthly coffee mornings, lunch and learn sessions, and writing retreats. Volunteers from the RSA Steering Committee help lead these activities, keeping costs low while enabling major programmes like ‘Making an Impact’ and the New Fellows Development Programme to run at scale.
The Liverpool approach suggests that financial constraints might push us toward more genuinely collaborative models of professional and career development, where researchers have greater agency in shaping their own learning experiences. Other conference sessions explored collaboration beyond academia and sustainable research practices, with participants reporting these discussions as genuinely helpful rather than just cost-cutting exercises.
The challenge is distinguishing between collaboration as genuine partnership and collaboration as euphemism for resource reduction. Models that give researchers meaningful roles in designing their own development might represent genuine partnership, rather than simply shifting costs away from institutions. Creating new relationships with external partners while maintaining collaborative principles could be part of this approach.
The upcoming in-person element of #VitaeCon2025 will showcase more examples of how the researcher development community is responding to current challenges. Some people might use words such as ‘resilience’ to describe this work, but that term is somewhat loaded in an HE context.
This connects to a broader evidence question that becomes more pressing as financial constraints intensify. We often assume the value of researcher development activities rather than having robust evidence across a wide range of outcomes. While some institutions might have fairly strong evidence, as a sector we don’t have enough overall. This matters particularly when thinking about what senior leaders and policymakers care about. For the UK government at the moment, this means mission-driven innovation, economic growth, and productivity.
The challenge is that professional and career development becomes an easy target for cuts during constrained times. It’s not just about reduced funding or budget cuts. When staff time is squeezed, with researchers told they can’t spend as much time on research and should do more teaching, the time they spend on professional and career development drops. Our CEDARS data already shows this is already low.
Perhaps the genuinely positive element lies not in the constraints themselves but in how they might force more honest conversations about what researcher development is for and who it serves. The Liverpool approach is interesting because it starts with what researchers say they need and builds from there, rather than beginning with institutional convenience or external expectations. The question posed of our panellists doesn’t have easy answers, but it’s the right question to be asking.
With increasing financial pressures we need more robust evidence about researcher development. Our new Vitae survey explores how research organisations approach evaluation and evidence-gathering. We want to understand your organisation’s approach.
Article written by Dr Yolana Pringle, Deputy CEO, Director of Programmes and Partnerships