Russell Group

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Russell Group
Data
Established	1994
Members	20
Continent	Europe
Country	United Kingdom
Leaders	Chairman: Professor Malcolm Grant, University College London Executive Director: Michael Carr, University of Liverpool

The Russell Group is a group of large research-led British universities 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[1], and contains most of the United Kingdom's leading universities with 18 of its 20 members in the top 20 in terms of research funding^{[citation needed]}. Nineteen smaller research universities formed the 1994 Group in response.

In 2004/5, 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^[1]. 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^[2], and in 2004/5 Russell Group Universities were allocated approximately 64% of the total quality-related research funding (QR) allocated by the Funding Councils^[3].

Contents 1 Objectives 2 Leadership 3 Name 4 Research funding 5 Policy on tuition fees 6 Aldwych Group 7 The members 8 See also 9 Notes 10 External links

[edit] 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.

[edit] Leadership

The group is chaired by Professor Malcolm Grant, President and Provost of University College London. The Group's Executive Director is Michael Carr, Registrar of the University of Liverpool.[2]

[edit] 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.

[edit] Research funding

In terms of total research funding in 2004/5 research funding allocations from the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), the top 15 universities were all Russell Group institutions^{[citation needed]} - the exceptions being the LSE, which is 22nd due to its focus on less lucrative social science research (The Queen's University of Belfast, Cardiff, Glasgow and Edinburgh are not included in this table, not being English institutions). The Russell Group institutions received 65% of the total HEFCE research funding allocation [3].

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 (i.e. science, technology and medicine tend to attract more money).

[edit] 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' union. Indeed, members of the Group argued that even the fees proposed by the controversial Higher Education Bill would not 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^{[citation needed]}.

[edit] 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.

[edit] The members

The current membership of the Group is: [4]

• 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 Leeds
• University of Liverpool
• London School of Economics
• University of Manchester
• Newcastle University
• University of Nottingham
• The Queen's University of Belfast (QUB)
• University of Oxford
• University of Sheffield
• University of Southampton
• University College London
• University of Warwick

[edit] See also

• Oxbridge
• University of Wales (the founding member of the federation are leading Research Universities in Wales as well as the United Kingdom}
• 1994 Group (smaller research-led British universities, including Durham, St Andrews, York and East Anglia)
• Association of American Universities (a group comprising 62 leading research universities in the USA and Canada)
• Public Ivies (a group comprising some of the most prestigious public universities in the USA)
• Ivy League (a group comprising some of the most prestigious private universities in the USA)
• Little Ivies ( a group comprising some of the most prestigious private liberal arts colleges in the USA)
• Coimbra Group (a network of leading European universities)
• Group of Thirteen (G13) (a group of leading Canadian universities)
• Group of Eight (Go8) (a group of leading Australian universities)
• Aldwych Group (Students' Unions of the Russell Group universities – generally opposed to Russell Group policies such as higher tuition fees)
• British university
• Campaigning for Mainstream Universities (Group of the ex-polytechnics)
• Alliance of Non-Aligned Universities
• Red Brick university
• Campus university
• Universitas 21 (a worldwide network of leading research universities)

[edit] Notes

[edit] External links

• Information on HERO
• Russell Group website
• Aldwych Group website
• Boris Johnson calls awareness to the unsettling fact that 9 of the Russell Group Universities have fewer than 30 black students
• 2001 research rankings for British Universities