International recruitment to MRC Studentships
Under current rules, research organisations are restricted in their use of Research Council funding to support non-UK domiciled candidates (i.e. “international students”) for studentships: EU students not normally resident in the UK may receive only fees, and non-EU nationals may receive neither fees nor stipends. Professor Adrian Smith’s report to BIS in 2010 (One Step beyond: Making the most of postgraduate education) recommended that Research Councils UK should examine ways of opening up more postgraduate research studentships to international students.
RCUK and the Research Councils have now adopted a statement describing a common position. MRC, has decided to relax the rule in respect of strategic research skills where there is a demonstrable shortage of UK candidates of sufficient calibre, combined with evidence of demand for doctoral graduates who previously have been trained in those skills.
The MRC eligibility policy produced in response to RCUK’s statement sets out how individual Research Organisations can gain MRC authorisation to recruit international students in two defined areas. You need to note that for the purposes of this policy, MRC is using a narrower definition of “strategic research skills” than recently sent to HEIs with Doctorial Training Grants (see document).
As the RCUK statement emphasises, Research Organisations have a duty to ensure that suitably qualified UK students have access to high quality PhD training. Consequently, while we welcome requests for authorisation, the case for doing so should be strong and based on good evidence. The case does not have to be elaborate and long.
Requests for authorisation should be emailed to MRC Policy & Operations with the subject heading “Request for authorisation to recruit international student”. In the normal course of events, we expect to be able to provide a response within 10 working days.