HESA opened a consultation in April 2024 proposing changes to the Higher Education - Business and Community Interaction (HE-BCI) survey.
HESA's proposals included the collection of enhanced data regarding the commercialisation of intellectual property (IP), and an additional collection during 2024 to gather data on historic spin-outs. Other changes related to improvements in the clarity of instructions for data collection, and explicit recognition that the data collection relates to knowledge exchange.
The consultation ran from 4 April 2024 to 16 May 2024.
Our response
In our response, we noted the potential opportunity that the HE-BCI return presents for IHE members to showcase the contribution that they make to local economies and the community. We highlighted the strength of our members in their close links with industry and social and community organisations, and the resulting potential to undertake the sorts of knowledge exchange activity that HE-BCI seeks to capture.
We emphasised, however, that the completion of this return is burdensome and resource intensive for our members. The proposals will increase this burden, both in the collection of additional information and as a result of guidance which is not sufficiently clear or specific for SME providers.
In particular, we highlighted the challenges of collecting additional information about spin-outs and start-ups. We emphasised that the collection of this information on the timelines proposed will be extremely challenging. We highlighted that for many providers this information will not be something they have collected before, and for which they do not have the systems in place. We recommended that if HESA wish to continue with this collection, there should be a reduced list of data items and that data is not published in the first year to enable quality assurance.
We also raised the following points on behalf of members:
- There needs to be a much clearer link to funding in the collection of this information and in the HE-BCI return overall. Where providers are not eligible for Higher Education Innovation Fund (HEIF) or Knowledge Exchange Framework (KEF) funding there should be no requirement for completion, or that additional funding is provided to cover the administrative cost and justify the resource burden.
- Greater focus should be placed on capturing activity with wider social and community value – such as opportunities for students, cultural activities, or activity which creates place-based benefits. We disagreed with the proposal to pause collection under Table 5 (social, community and cultural engagement) noting that IHE members generate value in these areas while also benefitting from this information to benchmark against other providers in bids for external funding.
Read our full response using the download link below.