Engineering and physics PhD numbers to fall despite extra funding

Fewer PhD students will be trained by the UK’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) in coming years despite the announcement of an extra £135 million for doctoral training, it has been confirmed.

As part of what the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) called the UK’s “biggest-ever investment in engineering and physical sciences doctoral skills”, the EPSRC will invest £479 million in 65 centres for doctoral training (CDTs), which will train “over 4,000 talented students across the UK” in the nine years from 2025.

That sum is substantially more than the £324 million for “about 40 CDTs” announced by the EPSRC in December 2022, which raised fears that hundreds of science PhD places were being lost. Previously, 75 CDTs were funded in the 2018 cycle, with each training about 50 PhD students over a five-year cycle, down from 115 four years earlier.

Confirming the new EPSRC settlement, UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) said the investment includes an additional £135 million for CDTs, which will start in 2025.

However, the funding body added that “given cost increases since 2018, the total number of students funded through this round of CDTs is approximately 5 per cent less than the 2018 investment”.

That confirmation is likely to heighten concerns over falling numbers of UKRI-funded PhD places, which dipped by almost 20 per cent between 2018-19 and 2021-22, when the number of UKRI-backed PhD starters fell from 6,835 to 5,580 – as revealed by Times Higher Education in November 2023.

The EPSRC – which sponsored about half of the 4,900 UKRI-funded starters in 2022-23 – is the country’s largest single funder of doctoral students.

Under the new CDT arrangements, UKRI will also invest an additional £16 million in funding for CDTs in quantum technologies, while more than £7 million will come from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), also part of UKRI, to co-fund three CDTs.

With £16 million of Ministry of Defence research funding to support two CDTs, £169 million of co-funding from UK universities and £420 million in “financial and in-kind support from business partners, public sector and charity partners”, the overall investment in CDTs amounted to “more than £1 billion”, according to UKRI and DSIT.

In addition to focusing on government priority areas of artificial intelligence, quantum technologies, semiconductors, telecoms and engineering biology, the CDTs will also lead research into emerging areas such as tackling harmful noise and its impact on health, education and other sectors; addressing the challenges facing water systems in the face of climate change and applying mathematical modelling, scientific computing, statistics and machine learning to climate-related problems.

Announcing the new package, science secretary Michelle Donelan said the investments from “government, business and academia…in ambitious UK talent” would provide them with “tools to pioneer new discoveries that benefit all our lives while creating new jobs and growing the economy”.

“By targeting critical technologies including artificial intelligence, and future telecoms, we are supporting world-class universities across the UK to build the skills base we need to unleash the potential of future tech and maintain our country’s reputation as a hub of cutting-edge research and development,” said Ms Donelan.

jack.grove@timeshighereducation.com