University receives £4.4m funding to improve employability skills
Research England has made the first award from its RED Fund to the University of Liverpool for an innovative project, worth £4.4m.
The aim is to boost the success of postdoctoral researchers outside of academia.
The project, called ‘Prosper: Enhancing first-time postdoctoral career development and success’, will develop researchers with the broader capabilities, attributes and mindset needed to thrive in multiple careers.
Research England is contributing £3.6m from its RED Fund, while a range of partners and investors across industry and local leadership are contributing the remaining £800,000.
Prosper, which aligns with the People Strand of the UK Government’s Industrial Strategy, will tackle equality, diversity and inclusivity issues that usually present barriers to training for postdoctoral researchers.
Postdoctoral researcher career development is a recognised area of concern in the higher education sector, with career development mainly directed towards academia.
But the proportion of postdoctoral researchers who secure a permanent academic position is small, which means the current approach both fails to support these researchers to achieve career success outside of academia, and fails to address the UK’s economic need for a highly-skilled workforce.
Science Minister Chris Skidmore said: “We have a golden opportunity to build on the successes of our world-class university sector to ensure that our future academic stars get the best all-round training we can provide. This project is the first step along that road.”
Pro-vice-chancellor for research and impact at the University of Liverpool, Prof Anthony Hollander, said: “We know from one-to-one conversations with our industry stakeholders, industry reports, national employer surveys and the growth of psychometric testing and competency-based interviews that employers are looking to recruit future leaders with exceptional soft skills and adaptability alongside their academic qualifications.
“The distinctiveness of Prosper is that we will develop it in conjunction with employers, principal investigators, funders, other HEIs and postgraduate researchers, with a range of partners across universities, business, and local government having committed to sharing their expertise in developing postgraduate researchers into high performing technical and business leaders.”
Director of knowledge exchange at Research England, Alice Frost, said: “This project aligns fully with our ambitions for the RED Fund – delivering Government and UK Research and Innovation priorities, providing innovative and sustainable models of research and knowledge exchange for the higher education sector more generally, promoting collaboration between universities, and risk sharing. As such, this is an exemplar project.”
The project will start this Summer where funding will support development and piloting activity for the Prosper model across three-and-a-half years.
On completion of the project the University of Liverpool intends to roll out the model across universities to ensure its sustainability.
