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I wish I had more time and headspace to write this up fully, but a month ago I sent FOI requests @UKRI_News and @officestudents about the current situation with PGRs. To add to the impressive report by @PandemicPGRs and @PaulBlomfieldMP's letter earlier, here they are 
(1/18)
(1/18)
Some background: @UKRI_News and @officestudents are meant to work together on a large number of issues, as laid out in this agreement from 2018. https://www.officeforstudents.org.uk/advice-and-guidance/partnerships-and-collaboration/agreements/ (2/18)
Section 8 of this agreement talks about quality and standards of research degrees, and commits @officestudents to working on areas like quality of provision, completion rates, and risks to PGRs (3/18)
@officestudents has said impressively little about PGRs through the pandemic, and definitely not since last June, when they published this briefing note https://www.officeforstudents.org.uk/publications/coronavirus-briefing-note-postgraduate-research-students/ (4/18)
So I thought I'd begin by asking them 1) what have they discussed about PGRs since August, 2) what risks do they currently see for PGRs, and 3) what have they said to @UKRI_News in that time? (5/18)
It turns out that the answer is... nothing (6/18)
They did also add this note to preface their answers, but I don't think it adds very much. (7/18)
To corroborate this, I asked questions 1) and 3) back to @UKRI_News to see what they said. My request was very broad, and was (fairly) refused under the FOIA. However, they provided some revealing information and gave interesting advice in doing so... (8/18)
Firstly, they said that they considered the policy to be solely in the remit of UKRI, because it only applies to students they fund. Moreover, they said they had *no joint working at all* with @officestudents over it (9/18)
(They then added that if I narrowed my search parameters they'd probably be able to give me some information.) (10/18)
Why do I think this matters? In short, we have a regulator in @officestudents that continues to show that it just doesn't understand how PGRs are different to other students. (11/18)
Yes, @UKRI_News can only make policy for the students it funds. But we should ask how different that policy should or could look if @officestudents bothered to take an interest in it. (12/18)
After all, @officestudents were recently running a consultation on quality and standards in higher education, where they *specifically said* that they planned to assess outcomes for PGRs (13/18) https://www.officeforstudents.org.uk/publications/consultation-on-regulating-quality-and-standards-in-higher-education/
The stark reality is that the current funding situation directly affects students' abilities to continue in their programmes, let alone complete it, or continue on to their chosen career as they wish. (14/18)
So it seems pretty remarkable that they want to have nothing to say to the largest enabler of postgraduate research in @UKRI_News about this. (15/18)
And equally, it's pretty interesting that @UKRI_News don't seem to care about notifying @officestudents about how their policy might impact the PGR community. (16/18)
Most of all, I really think there's a huge risk of alienating current students from research for a very long time given the way they're treated. (17/18) https://twitter.com/csbrasnett/status/1326628065158574085?s=20
I hope this is a small and useful addition to the great insight that @PandemicPGRs have given many today, and that we can see some more answers from @UKRI_News in response to @PaulBlomfieldMP. Here are some more of my thoughts from last year (18/18) https://www.hepi.ac.uk/2020/11/25/adjust-your-projects-ukris-announcement-is-a-red-flag-for-research/
