UK university spin-out rates continue to drop as startups take off.
UK universities are seeing more of their students set up businesses as their ownership stakes in the startups has been falling.
All 160 publicly-funded UK higher education institutions (HEI), plus the University of Buckingham, complete an annual survey, called HE Business and Community Interaction, and the results for the 2012-13 academic year showed 126 spin-offs with some HEI ownership, down about a third from 158 in 2011-12. After share sales and business closures, HEIs owned part of 1,069 spin-offs, compared to 1,045 in the 2011-12 period.
Staff startups fell to 62 from 84 in these years, taking the overall total to 432.
However, formal spin-offs, not HEI owned, rose to 24 from 17 in the same period taking the aggregate number to 208, while graduate startups increased by nearly a third to 3,502 in 2012-13 from 2,729 in the prior academic year. After share sales and business closure is accounted for, there were 8,127 graduate startups in 2012/13 compared to 7,151 in 2011/12.
Looking at employment levels in these businesses, formal spin-offs, not HEI owned, are the biggest business on average as the 208 companies employed 10,768 people – an average of about 50 – compared to an average of about 10 people for ones where HEIs retained some ownership or less than two for graduate startups.
Academic institutions could also gain money from these startups and spin-offs through contract research and consultancy, which bring in £1.57bn ($2.5bn) to HEIs. Intellectual property, including sale of shares in spin-offs, brought in £86.6m in 2012/13, up from £79.4m the year before. In total, business and community sources bring in about £3.5bn for UK HEIs.
