  There are very significant changes taking place in the university sector and
in related higher education institutes in many parts of the world. In this work
we look at financial data from 2010 and 2011 from the UK higher education
sector. Situating ourselves to begin with in the context of teaching versus
research in universities, we look at the data in order to explore the new
divergence between the broad agendas of teaching and research in universities.
The innovation agenda has become at least equal to the research and teaching
objectives of universities. From the financial data, published in the Times
Higher Education weekly newspaper, we explore the interesting contrast, and
very opposite orientations, in specialization of universities in the UK. We
find a polarity in specialism that goes considerably beyond the usual one of
research-led elite versus more teaching-oriented new universities. Instead we
point to the role of medical/bioscience research income in the former, and
economic and business sectoral niche player roles in the latter.
