Can UK Universities Produce Enough Scientists to Meet Britain's Needs? (May 26, 2006)

     The Royal Society yesterday issued a media release that it has launched a study to "assess whether higher education science and technology at UK universities and colleges will produce enough individuals with the skills to meet the needs of the economy in 2015 and beyond".

Speaking for the society, the crystallographer Judith Howard, chair of the Royal Society higher education working group said,

Our study will be asking fundamental questions about what we expect from higher education in terms of the skills, knowledge and experience of the science

Durham University's Professor Judith Howard

 and technology graduates it produces and the way in which the universities, colleges and industry may be able to work together to achieve this. There has, for example, been much anecdotal evidence about students entering university without important science and maths-related skills and university leavers beginning their careers without other broader key skills. This study will build, for the first time, a comprehensive picture of what the situation really is.

 

We will be looking at science at the various stages of higher education to identify the key issues facing us in terms of producing a workforce trained with the skills that will be essential if the UK is to continue to develop as a knowledge-based economy. The study will help put the debate over the closures of individual university departments in strategically important subjects such as chemistry in the broader context of the economy.

Professor Howard went on to say that the study was particularly important in the "context of higher education in the UK, the Bologna process, an EU agreement to harmonise higher education across Europe, and changes in the school curriculum,"  which will require higher education institutions to reconsider how they deliver their courses.

The working group are scheduled to report their findings in about 15 months.