Delivering Highly Skilled People

Drive innovation in knowledge exchange through enhancement of knowledge exchange skills in the research base and encourage movement of highly skilled people between the research base and user communities at all career stages.

The UK requires a sufficient supply of excellent, highly skilled researchers to support innovation and global competitiveness. Of the 4500 RCUK Doctoral graduates each year, over 60% will move from higher education, taking their skills into the wider economy. RCUK seeks to ensure that this supply of highly trained people meets the need for specialist postgraduate research skills in a wide range of employment sectors.

We also recognise that highly skilled researchers are vital to successful knowledge exchange between the research base and user communities and will ensure that these skills are specifically included in researcher development.

RCUK will:

• Develop mechanisms to encourage people exchange between research base and user partners at all career stages.
• Support the development of skills that foster and enable enterprise, knowledge exchange and innovation and thereby equip researchers to maximise the impact of their research and research-related activities.
• Improve our understanding of the career pathways of researchers and ensure their research training equips them to impact on the economy, society and our quality of life.

For further information and opportunities available:

• Research Careers and Diversity
• Concordat to Support the Career Development for Researchers
• Collaborative Doctoral Students
• People Exchange
• Training for Business and Policy
• Evidence for Public Policy
• Enterprise Training