Cambridge risks losing ‘unbelievable talent’ amid PhD funding cut Warning by vice-chancellor Deborah Prentice comes as ‘Silicon Valley’ planned between Oxford and Cambridge.
The vice-chancellor acknowledged the enormous financial difficulties faced by much of the sector and said Cambridge was fortunate to be largely protected by its £4.2bn endowment fund and its income from Cambridge University Press and Assessment.
Prof Deborah Prentice, who took over as vice-chancellor in 2023, described PhD students as “the lifeblood” of the university’s research and innovation work, and expressed concern that funding from research councils had “dropped off significantly”.
Prentice said one of her chief concerns for the future was the decline in PhD funding, which had been flagged during talks with the university’s six academic schools and was her “number one priority”.
Prentice, an eminent American psychologist with academic expertise in the study of social norms that govern human behaviour, was provost at Princeton University before she became Cambridge’s 347th vice-chancellor.
