¡°You can¡¯t have a career in academia without winning a large grant,¡± a colleague told me in my early days as a university lecturer.

He was not exaggerating. Recent moves to cut unfunded research at Newcastle University and elsewhere in the Russell Group suggest that many academics may soon face a stark choice: win a grant, do your research in your free time, or don¡¯t do research at all.

These developments are not just a symptom of the financial crisis in UK higher education but reflect broader shifts in what academia values. Universities have embraced as universal a definition of success long dominant in the natural sciences: securing large sums of money, employing others and, thereby, becoming managers of research groups.

This definition of success is not self-evident even in the sciences. In the humanities and qualitative social sciences it can be downright dangerous.

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These disciplines do not have a tradition of building labs and research groups in the same way that natural sciences do ¨C for good reason. Few scholars in these fields require expensive equipment or conduct experiments that demand large teams of researchers. Instead, much of their work is based on deep individual inquiry, archival research, theoretical analysis and long-form writing ¨C methods that often benefit from sustained reflection rather than intensive teamwork.

The expectation that humanities and social science scholars must nevertheless conform to a model of research designed for the sciences risks devaluing forms of scholarship that do not require large financial investment ¨C such as theoretical innovation, historical interpretation and cultural critique ¨C yet have profoundly shaped human understanding. It also risks distorting academics¡¯ work, incentivising projects that fit funders¡¯ priorities rather than those driven by intellectual curiosity and public need.

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That has particularly bad knock-on effects for early-career researchers. A key aspect of PhD education is learning to pose original questions and define a unique research agenda. But in many universities, humanities and social science students can only choose their own topics now if they self-fund, since the topics of grant-funded projects have already been set out in the application and other funding is extremely scarce.

This forces doctoral students into an impossible dilemma: become a compliant worker on someone else¡¯s idea or pursue their own research and shoulder exorbitant fees. Some of the funding currently locked into large projects could instead support doctoral students to pursue their own research agendas?¨C restoring autonomy without sacrificing support.

Time-limited grants also create precarious employment, particularly for junior researchers. This instability not only harms well-being but also undermines productivity, as researchers must constantly seek their next position or write yet another proposal to sustain their careers. Some might argue that precarious employment is better than no employment at all, but this is a false choice. The same resources could be used to create more stable academic roles ¨C positions that support long-term inquiry rather than short-term deliverables.

Another major issue is the sheer waste of time and energy spent on unsuccessful grant proposals. A 2013 study from Australia estimated that a single funding round could consume the equivalent of . That calculation assumed a 20 per cent success rate, but in the UK today, success rates for some research council schemes have dropped below 10 per cent. While grant writing can generate valuable ideas and partnerships, it is impossible to ignore how inefficient these competitions have become.

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An even bigger gripe for academics is the managerial responsibilities that come with large grants, eating into time they could otherwise spend on intellectual exploration. In conversations with colleagues, I often hear even more complaints about the excessive bureaucracy of managing grants than about low success rates. Anyone who has had to complete a lengthy ¡°due diligence¡± form just to pay a collaborator abroad knows the frustration all too well.

There are also equity concerns. Universities and funding bodies should embrace alternative funding mechanisms that cut down on waste, reduce inequality and free researchers from the cycle of precarity. In some European countries, for instance, researchers receive baseline funding, allowing them to focus on independent inquiry rather than bureaucratic hoop-jumping.

Love and money: why the search for funding is like romance

Another radical yet increasingly credible alternative is lottery-based funding, where all eligible proposals that meet a basic quality threshold are entered into a draw. Systems have been trialled in New Zealand and . And an ongoing UK trial by the British Academy found that many more humanities and social sciences scholars from ethnic minority backgrounds are applying for ¨C and winning ¨C research grants from its Small Grants Scheme since it started using ¡°partial randomisation¡±?to make decisions.

By rethinking research funding, academia could break free from its obsession with external income and foster a system that values creativity, independence and genuine intellectual progress over the relentless chase for cash. For instance, more funding currently earmarked for large grants by the research councils could be distributed in the form of micro-grants; in the humanities and social sciences, even modest sums can produce meaningful scholarship.

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After all, funding is an input, a means to an end. What matters much more is the output. What might the academic landscape look like if, instead of rewarding universities and researchers for securing funding, we held them to a higher standard of achievement relative to the resources they have used?

?is a lecturer in climate and development at the University of Leeds.

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