| 29 March 2005 |  |
||||||
|
|
Circular letter number 06/2005
For further information contact Adrian Day, tel 0117 931 7428, e-mail a.day@hefce.ac.uk
Dear Vice-Chancellor or Principal
2005 HE-business and community interaction (HE-BCI) survey
I am writing to let you know the arrangements for the 2005 annual survey of interactions between higher education institutions (HEIs) and business and the wider community, and to ask for your help in ensuring that the survey is completed fully and on time. The survey will be available online by mid April, and responses are due by Friday 20 May 2005. (Details, when finalised, will be sent to the agreed contact in your institution.)
This will be the fifth such survey conducted on behalf of all UK higher education funding bodies, and the second using the improved format introduced last year.
Data from previous surveys have already been used - by HEFCE, the Department for Education and Skills, and the Department of Trade and Industry/Office of Science and Technology (DTI/OST) - to demonstrate the contribution that HE makes to the economy and society, supporting the case for investment. The HM Treasury document 'Science and innovation investment framework 2004-14' drew extensively on these data. It confirms the Government's commitment that the next round of allocations under the Higher Education Innovation Fund (HEIF) will be substantially by formula, rather than wholly by competitive bidding. With the OST, we are consulting on the process for allocating HEIF3 funds, and we have worked closely with HEIs and the survey stakeholders group to ensure that much of the HE-BCI data are sufficiently robust to be used in the funding formula being developed.
It has also been agreed that, to inform the development of HEIF3 and wider third stream policy, all 2005 survey data will be made publicly available once the final survey report has been published. It is therefore important that the HE-BCI data are complete and returned on time. (For English HEIs, providing such data to inform national policies is a condition of grant under their financial memorandum with HEFCE.)
Every effort has been made to limit the burden of data collection while maximising the usefulness to HEIs and other stakeholders. The survey process for 2005 remains unchanged from last year. The survey will be available on the HEFCE extranet, in two parts. Part A is an online database with questions relating to institutional strategy and capacity. These data are relatively stable and need be updated only where changes have taken place - thus minimising the administrative burden. However, we will extract the information for publication at the end of the academic year so it is important that all updates have been made by Friday 29 July.
Numerical and financial data, based on the academic year 2003-04, should be returned in Part B, a Microsoft Excel document. In order to improve data quality and develop a meaningful time-series, the stakeholders group has strictly limited changes to the questionnaire. However, in response to feedback from the HE sector we have amended a handful of questions to remove some perceived ambiguities.
Some business and community activities have been under-represented in the survey. We have therefore developed some questions relating to social, community and cultural activities into Part B. The questions have been developed to improve HEIs' and stakeholders' understanding of these activities which, while central to the Government's objectives, are not as readily measured by proxies as activities that are primarily wealth creating.
Details and access codes for the HEFCE extranet are available at Appendix A.
If you have any queries about the survey, please contact Adrian Day.
Thank you for your support and co-operation.
Yours sincerely
Howard Newby
Chief Executive
Download
Appendix A: Accessing and using the HEFCE extranet
[ MS Word 51K |
Zipped Word 12K |
Adobe PDF 27K |
Zipped PDF 17K ]