Select Committee on Education and Skills Minutes of Evidence


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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