New Report: UK Universities are Finding it Tough to Recruit Science Lecturers. (January 4, 2006)

    According to the EducationGuardian.co.uk a new report by Lifelong Learning UK (LLUK) shows that "[f]or the past 10 years universities have been trying to cope with rising student numbers by hiring more foreign academics. Numbers from eastern and central Europe tripled between 1995 and 2003, while twice as many came from western Europe and Scandinavia and there were substantial increases in lecturers from Asia, Australasia and north America."

LLUK summarises its findings saying, that data collected by the Higher Education Statistics Agency show the number of permanent staff teaching engineering and related subjects fell by 14% between 1995-2006 and 2003-2004. For maths, chemistry and physics, there were decreases of 10%. And this despite salary levels significantly above those for other academics.

"[B]y 2003/4, a typical physics lecturer could expect to earn £5,970 (A$14,100) more than the average academic. Chemistry lecturers were earning £4,640 (A$10,900) above the median for academic staff, while in maths and engineering, lecturers received respectively £3,970 (A$9,400) and £2,400 (A$5,700) above the norm."

While the LLUK reports that subjects other than engineering and the enabling sciences showed increases in staffing during this period, it pointed out that this must be set against rapidly rising student numbers, up 39% (600,000 students).

The Guardian reports "The biggest increases in staffing are in subjects allied to medicine (66%) as a result of universities taking over nursing training. The large rise (56%) in the number of academics teaching computer science contrasts with increases of 9% in humanities and 2% in languages," and according to the latest figures there are "214,940 full-time and 103,585 part-time staff working in 171 institutions across the UK (excluding library staff)."

Just how the Blair government will react to the report remains to be seen. Kion Ahadi, the research and data officer at LLUK, said it should be of interest to policymakers, human resources managers and administrators. "There is no other report available that analyses workforce and skills issues in such a holistic and comprehensive way."

From an Australian viewpoint the report gives an indication of just how competitive the recruitment of top academics in engineering and the enabling sciences is and will remain.