27th July 2012, 01:09 PM
It would be interesting to find out what proportion of the various University departmental incomes come from providing specialist services to commercial contractors - one of our local Unis must have a significant income from it (quite apart from running their own unit), we certainly give them plenty of trade, and not just within the archeology department. Surely it's in their own interests in this day and age to have as tight links with commercial units as possible as an extra funding stream, and I'm sure student participation could be more actively worked into that