News & Views item - January  2005

 

 

UK Scientists Accuse British Universities of Dumping Enabling Sciences in Favour of the Cheap and Popular. (January 16, 2005)

    At the end of last November the British Chancellor, Gordon Brown, put forward his plans for elevating Britain's "scientific genius". That seemed to goad some of the UK's leading enabling scientists into challenging both both universities' administrations and the government to get cracking.

 

    The Times reported on December 5 that currently 16 of the 50 university physics departments in the UK are at risk and added that since 1997 over 30% have closed. As regards chemistry, 28 universities have ceased to offer chemistry since 1996 and the Royal Society of Chemistry has warned that unless remedial action is taken quickly their could be only six chemistry departments left in the UK by 2010.

 

The problems facing the enabling sciences in Britain are not dissimilar to the ones facing them in much of the rest of first world nations. There has been a marked decline in secondary school students taking the more advanced courses in physics, chemistry and mathematics and in the numbers of matriculating students choosing to major in them.

 

Despite Chancellor Brown's pronouncement, last year government funding per science student fell by £124 while for the current financial year it rose only 3% the lowest of any of the four main university subject groups. In contrast the Times reports, "Funding for arts subjects, the cheapest to run, rose by 24% to £3,484." This approach ,together with the UK's move towards  £3,000 top-up fees, is forcing universities to shift to more popular courses in order to place "more bums on seats".

 

One result of recent events has been that Exeter University has threatened termination of a number its departments included chemistry, music and Italian, which moved Nobelist Harry Kroto (1996, Chemistry) to tell the university he would return his honorary degree. And Anne Tropper, Southampton University's head of physics and astronomy, alluding to her institution's struggle to fill places, told the Times, "We are one of the five universities with the highest [RAE] score for research in physics. Many prestigious departments are now feeling the draft."

 

In any case the media attention may have awoken the Houses of Parliament or at least part of one. Shortly before Christmas The Guardian reported that a House of Commons' committee is to launch, "A wide-ranging inquiry into the state of science in English universities ...following a series of degree course closures in chemistry, physics, mathematics and engineering."

 

The chairman of the investigating committee is to be Ian Gibson, the Labour member for Norwich North. Dr Gibson was awarded a PhD by Edinburgh University, then joined the University of East Anglia and served as Dean of the School of Biological Science from 1991 to 1997 before entering the House of Commons.

 

Dr Gibson has invited submissions and requested they address:

  1. the impact of Hefce's [Higher Education Funding Council of England's] research funding formulae, as applied to research assessment exercise (RAE) ratings, on the financial viability of university science departments;

  2. the desirability of increasing the concentration of research in a small number of university departments, and the consequences of such a trend;

  3. the implications for university science teaching of changes in the weightings given to science subjects in the teaching funding formula;

  4. the optimal balance between teaching and research provision in universities, giving particular consideration to the desirability and financial viability of teaching-only science departments;

  5. the importance of maintaining a regional capacity in university science teaching and research; and

  6. the extent to which the government should intervene to ensure continuing provision of subjects of strategic national or regional importance; and the mechanisms it should use for this purpose.

Whether or not a review by the House of Commons will be of any greater value in revitalising Britain's tertiary and postgraduate science as compared to those in Australia called for by the Minister for Education, Science and Training, Brendan Nelson, remains to be seen.