Funding Research: An Exploration of Inter‐Discipline Variations

In 1993, the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) introduced a new system for determining the research component of block grant funding to English universities. The inter‐disciplinary differences in the amounts allocated suggest funding anomalies which are not related to the costs of research infrastructure in those disciplines. Analyses of the allocation procedure indicate how those anomalies have come about. I am grateful to the staff of the HEFCE for providing tabulations of unpublished data, and for background information of the allocation procedure, and to Mr R. E. Goodchild for useful discussions and advice.