Higher Education Innovation Fund
The Higher Education Innovation Fund (HEIF) supports institutions to engage in a broad range of knowledge transfer activities with business, public sector and community partners, for direct or indirect economic benefit. HEIF is a partnership between HEFCE and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS).
HEIF 1 and 2
The HEIF began in 2001, with the first invitation for proposals (HEFCE 01/34). In this first round, 89 awards totalling more than £77 million were confirmed. The funding allocations were announced in 2002 (HEFCE 02/04). A summary evaluation of the first round of the HEIF programme was published in February 2006.
Funding for a second round of HEIF (HEIF 2) was announced in 2003 (HEFCE 2003/58). A total of 124 awards totalling £186 million were made for 2004-05 and 2005-06, of which 46 were collaborations between more than one HE institution. Around £16 million of funding went to support a network of Centres for Knowledge Exchange. Funding allocations were announced in HEFCE 2004/46.
HEIF 3
In 2005 we invited HEIs to apply for funds under the third round of HEIF, for the period 2006-08 (HEFCE 2005/46). Total funding available was £238 million.
Previously, HEIF funding had been awarded to proposed projects based on a competitive process. In HEIF 3, three-quarters of the funding was allocated by formula, based on data from HESA and the HE-business and community interaction survey. All HEFCE-funded HEIs received an allocation on condition that they submit a plan setting out how they would use the funding to support knowledge transfer activities.
The rest of the funding under HEIF 3 was allocated through a competition intended to fund innovative projects of significant scale and impact. Eleven projects were awarded funding through the competition. They were all large-scale collaborative initiatives including several HEIs, and external partners from business and community organisations.
Both the institutional plans and successful competition bids can be downloaded from the web archive at the National Archives web-site.
£16 million of HEIF 3 was awarded as continuation funding for the 22 Centres for Knowledge Exchange which were initiated in 2004 under HEIF 2.
The final allocations of funding under HEIF 3 were published in HEFCE 2006/30.
Review of HEIF funding
We are reviewing lessons learnt from HEIF 3 with a view to informing future funding. As part of this process, in November 2006 we requested feedback from HEIs and some regional stakeholders on the process through which HEFCE/OSI allocated HEIF 3 funding; the comments we received are summarised below.
Summary of HEIF 3 feedback
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Last updated 12 September 2007