Scottish universities are to get an average 4% increase in funding for next year.

The announcement from the Scottish Higher Education Funding Council includes £528m for teaching, £180m for research, and £16m for other projects such as computer networks.

The main research funding has gone up by 14%.

This covers departments which achieved a rating of 3a or above in the recent research assessment exercise, which compares how well UK university departments have done.

There is a special grant of £2m for "new and developing research" at other departments.

Better research work

Teaching funds are to rise by 2.5%, which the council says will pay for the equivalent of an extra 400 full-time places - the normal unit of measure - although actually most of the places will be part-time.

It says all higher education institutions will receive overall increases in core funding in cash terms - the average being 5.7% in a range from 2% to 13%.

The larger increases are due to "very significant improvements in research performance".

The council's chief executive, Roger McClure, said: "The council has greatly welcomed the increases in resources from the Scottish Executive.

"In allocating the funds made available, it has sought to provide a balanced platform for the higher education sector in Scotland to make further progress on the effective delivery of the key priorities: widening student participation, enhancing the quality of teaching and sustaining and developing research excellence and effective knowledge transfer."