Russell Group Totally Explained

Everything about Russell Group Of Universities totally explained

The Russell Group is a collaboration of twenty UK universities that receive two-thirds of universities' research grant and contract funding in the United Kingdom. It was established in 1994 to represent their interests to the Government, Parliament and other similar bodies. It is sometimes referred to as the British equivalent of the Ivy League of the United States, though, since the Ivy League includes a significant focus on its athletic association, a more apt comparison would be the American Association of Universities. The Russell Group contains many of the United Kingdom's leading universities with 18 of its 20 members in the top 20 in terms of research funding. Nineteen smaller research universities formed the 1994 Group in response.
In May of 2004, Russell Group Universities accounted for 65% (over £1.8billion) of UK Universities' research grant and contract income, 56% of all doctorates awarded in the United Kingdom, and over 30% of all students studying in the United Kingdom from outside the EU. In the 2001 national Research Assessment Exercise, 78% of the staff in Grade 5* departments and 57% of the staff in Grade 5 departments were located in Russell Group Universities, and in 2004/5 Russell Group Universities were allocated approximately 64% of the total quality-related research funding (QR) allocated by the Funding Councils.

Objectives

The Russell Group states that its objectives are to:

lead the UK's research effort;
maximise income for its member institutions;
attract the best staff and students to those institutions;
create the regulatory environment in which it can achieve these objectives by reducing government interference; and
identify ways to co-operate in order to exploit the universities' collaborative advantage.

It works towards these objectives by lobbying the UK Government and Parliament; by commissioning reports, research and opinion polls; and by creating a forum in which the universities can discuss issues of common concern and identify ways to work together.

Leadership

The group is chaired by Professor Malcolm Grant, President and Provost of University College London. Dr Wendy Piatt was appointed in January 2007 as Director General. Formerly, she worked as Deputy Director in the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit and as former head of education at the Institute of Public Policy Research (IPPR).
The group's Director of Research is Libby Aston a former advisor to the Select Committee for Education and Skills, specialising in higher education policy. She has also worked at the Higher Education Funding Council for England from 2000 and at the Higher Education Policy Institute from its establishment in 2003 as their Senior Researcher.

Name

The Russell Group is so named because the first informal meetings of the Group took place at the Russell Hotel in Russell Square, London, generally shortly before meetings of Universities UK (formerly known as Committee of Vice Chancellors and Principals, or CVCP) in Tavistock Square.

Research funding

In terms of total research funding allocations from the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) in 2007/8, the top 15 universities were all Russell Group institutions. LSE was 21st, due to its focus on less lucrative social science research, and Queen's University, Belfast, Cardiff, Glasgow and Edinburgh, were not included in this table, as they're not English institutions. The Russell Group institutions received 82% of the total HEFCE research funding allocation.
It should be noted that the research funding figures depend on factors other than the quality of research, in particular there are variations due to institutional size and subject spread (for example science, technology and medicine tend to attract more money).

Policy on tuition fees

The Russell Group has been prominent in recent years in the debate over the introduction of tuition fees, a measure which it has strongly supported - much to the dismay of the universities' students' unions. Indeed, members of the Group argued that even the fees proposed by the controversial Higher Education Bill wouldn't be sufficient to cover the rising cost of undergraduate teaching, and successfully argued for the right to charge variable fees at much higher rates, so-called top-up fees.

Aldwych Group

In response to the Russell Group's support for tuition fees (and other issues), the students' unions of the member universities formed the Aldwych Group as a parallel organisation to represent the common interests of their students.

Members

The current membership of the Group is:

University of Birmingham

University of Bristol

University of Cambridge

Cardiff University

University of Edinburgh

University of Glasgow

Imperial College London

King's College London, University of London

University College London, University of London

University of Leeds

University of Liverpool

London School of Economics and Political Science

University of Manchester

Newcastle University

University of Nottingham

Queen's University Belfast

University of Oxford

University of Sheffield

University of Southampton

University of Warwick* ť Note: * Also a member of the 1994 Group.

Further Information

Get more info on 'Russell Group Of Universities'.

External Link Exchanges

Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:

<a href="http://russell_group.totallyexplained.com">Russell Group Totally Explained</a>

Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned.