The Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) has announced its high-level funding decisions, following the annual grant letter from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills on 14^th January. Allocations to individual universities and colleges will be announced on 21 March.  The HEFCE Board agreed £4.47 billion for distribution for the 2013-14 academic year. This breaks down as follows:

• £2.3 billion for teaching – reducing from £3.2 billion last year.  This will include widening participation activity (£105 million), student retention (£228 million) and funding for taught postgraduate students not eligible for government tuition fee loans.
• £1.6 billion for research – retained for the third year running (including £1 billion for QR and £240million for research degrees).
• £160 million for knowledge exchange – increasing by £10 million from last year.
• £429 million in non-recurrent funds (capital grants, national programmes, Revolving Green Fund, Catalyst Fund).

The full press release and links to further information on student number allocations is available at http://www.hefce.ac.uk/news/newsarchive/2013/name,76482,en.html.