40. Memorandum submitted by Professor
Gordon Marshall, Vice-Chancellor,The University of Reading
Thank you for your invitation to comment on
the recent White Paper.
I write in my capacity as Vice-Chancellor of
the University of Reading (since January of this year), but you
may remember that we met on several occasions while I was Chief
Executive of the Economic and Social Research Council, when you
kindly agreed to speak at some of our conferences.
The consensus of colleagues at this university
is that the broad policy objectives of the White Paper are in
the main laudable. However, the precise mechanisms to achieve
these have not been sufficiently attended to, with the likely
result that implementation will produce unintended and undesirable
consequences across the sector. One such effect is already apparent:
substantial new money is being invested in higher education but
its allocation seems only to have succeeded in angering the majority
of recipients.
I expect your committee will receive a good
deal of comment. Let me confine my own remarks to two areas—research
(chapter 2) and HE and business (chapter 3).
RESEARCH
The degree of selectivity being applied will
tend to fix research at a few sites and there will be little chance
of new schools of thought emerging in unconventional places. There
is no evidence from the history of science to support this degree
of concentration.
In the past, science and innovation has blossomed
in a wide range of institutions, with much sought after "disruptive
science and technology" in particular emerging from both
established and newer units alike. The decision to remove funding
from grade 4 departments and reallocate it to those graded 5**
is therefore neither justified nor efficient and will gradually
erode the freedom to work outside the Big Four universities.
There appears here to be a lack of "joined
up" thinking. The aspirations of the "Investing for
Innovation" strategy published in July 2002, which emphasises
the need for a strong science base, will be undermined by the
degree of selectivity in research funding that is now being required
of the Funding Council by the Department. The two arms of dual
support are working against each other.
From a purely person point of view I find this
deeply ironic. As Chief Executive of a Research Council, I worked
hard with colleagues across the science and engineering base to
address structural concerns about the UK's capacity in this area,
and supported many initiatives to attract additional resources
and encourage new blood into science and engineering. Having now
assumed leadership of a science-rich and research-intensive "Top
20" university, I find myself unable to resource adequately
this institution's basic science departments, as a direct consequence
of the White Paper—despite the new money that is available.
These departments have been graded 4, meaning
of course that they are nationally excellent with some international
excellence, although this seems to have been forgotten in the
drive to "build critical mass". They include a Department
of Physics that is bucking the national trend by increasing the
numbers of undergraduates taught, and Chemistry and Biology Departments
that work in an interdisciplinary environment, providing active
and necessary contributions to the more specialised sciences in
which we excel internationally. Undue concentration of funding
in pursuit of the policy objective of research excellence will
make it even more difficult to sustain the science base in places
such as Reading. In the long term, this will make Reading a less
attractive place for researchers in the "applied" sciences,
which is where our 5 and 5* departments have been placed.
A further illustration of this failure to join-up
policy is provided by the misalignment of QR and Science Research
Infrastructure Funding. Having had resources for research taken
out of Reading's basic sciences, the university now finds itself
the recipient of £13 millions via the SRIF, money provided
specifically in order to refurbish and upgrade our science and
engineering facilities.
There seems to be little understanding amongst
those making policy that the implementation of the White Paper
is producing perverse and unintended consequences such as this
in many universities. Frankly, from where I now sit, I see the
White Paper undermining the science research and skills base of
the UK.
HE AND BUSINESS
This too is an evidence-free section of the
White Paper that is unsupported by the facts. It rests on a discredited
"linear" or "pipeline" model of knowledge
transfer that was rejected explicitly (by the Research Councils
amongst others) many years ago.
It is good to see that all universities will
be expected to promote knowledge transfer activities. But it is
not credible to imagine that these activities can be arranged
pipeline fashion (patent at one end and consultancy at the other)
and then lined up to correspond to hierarchically arranged "types
of university". Innovation and engagement with business does
not happen this way. This looks like a flawed attempt to over-engineer
a desired outcome, based on a misunderstanding of what happens
in the United States, the implicit and sometimes explicit benchmark
behind much of the White Paper.
Specifically, for example, the purpose and mode
of operation of "knowledge exchanges" is unknown, and
the White Paper has little to say about the regional and community
roles of universities generally. This section of the White Paper
is largely aspirational with little indication of how any of the
items suggested might be achieved.
I am sorry to be writing in such critical terms.
However, as someone who has worked until recently with policy
makers in support of science and engineering, I do find it disconcerting
to see the policy objectives of the White Paper being undermined
due to the crude and inefficient mechanisms used in its delivery.
March 2003
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