APPENDIX 7
Memorandum from the Russell Group
1. I write on behalf of the English members
of the Russell Group of Universities in response to your Committee's
invitation for the submission of evidence to its Inquiry into
Strategic Science Provision in English Universities. This is an
important subject, which is indeed of relevance across the UK,
and the Russell Group welcomes this opportunity to contribute.
Throughout this response we have used the phrase "science"
to refer to the specific subjects referred to by the Committee.
2. At the outset, we feel that the Inquiry
should recognise that the matters it is seeking to review are
being shaped by four primary considerations operating at the national
or international level and as set out below, which have come together
to create an environment where some further concentration of provision
in science is both inevitable and indeed desirable.
2.1 Dynamic Changes to the Scale of Research
Capability
In its Science and Innovation Investment Framework
2004-14, Government itself has recognised that research has become
intensely competitive at the global level. To be competitive,
research needs to be of the highest quality and at the cutting-edge.
This in turn requires increasingly sophisticated and diverse staff
expertise and facilities, and often also the constructive interaction
of cognate disciplines, each capable of performing at the highest
level. Success in the face of such international competition requires
therefore a proper depth of research expertise and capability,
particularly in science subjects. For the UK, these considerations
are resulting in processes of greater research concentration.
2.2 The Relationship between Research and
Teaching
Research concentration also has relevance for
teaching provision and for higher-level training in science. Postgraduate
research students have always been a very important component
of a dynamic research environment in science and it has long been
recognised that their successful training can only be assured
where vibrant communities of such students can be supported and
sustained in sufficient numbers. At the undergraduate level, high
quality and up to date teaching also requires access to a range
of staff expertise and of facilities which can only be sustained
by a successful research community. There is therefore an essential
and close link between the sustainability of high quality teaching
and the successful prosecution of research activity.
2.3 Student Demand
In this symbiotic relationship between teaching
and research, there is of course an equivalent reliance upon an
adequate supply of students. It is almost impossible to sustain
a successful research department that does not also include a
healthy range and scale of teaching. However, the demand for teaching
in science has shown considerable adverse change over a number
of years, with a marked reduction in the proportion of students
wishing to pursue undergraduate courses in science. This is particularly
so for the State sector, which in recent years has seen a substantial
decline in the number of students leaving secondary education
with what might be regarded as the minimum of qualification of
two science A levels. To counter this trend, universities and
the professional bodies have been working very hard to generate
interest and aspiration. But the dynamics are such that student
demand in these areas is ultimately an issue of national significance
which will have to be addressed at the Secondary Education level,
and any significant improvements will necessarily have long lead
times. In this regard, we look forward to the Government's response
to the Tomlinson Report as an opportunity to begin to address
these matters substantively.
2.4 Strategic Planning and Competition
It is now clear that universities in the United
Kingdom are working in competition at both home and abroad. As
autonomous bodies, this has required them to think carefully about
their strategies, about their priorities and about their strengths
and weaknesses. The need to maximise performance and to sustain
provision in areas of strength or strategic priority necessarily
involves also a careful assessment of the resources that can be
directed elsewhere, and in particular the extent to which chronically
under-performing or lower-priority activities can or should be
sustained.
3. Having set out what we consider to be
the primary drivers in the matters under review, we should like
to make the following comments about the policy implications for
science provision:
3.1 Rationalisation and Collaboration
The fall in student demand and the requirements
of research competitiveness and concentration together require
a policy environment which manages rather than obstructs necessary
change. In circumstances where a university considers that its
provision in a science subject is weak and no longer properly
sustainable or part of its strategic priorities, it should be
able to work with HEFCE and with other universities to transfer
that funded provision more appropriately elsewhere, while being
enabled to retain equivalent resources to reapply to its strategic
strengths and priorities. Through such an arrangement, the consequences
of large-scale processes can be properly mediated and directed
to the benefit of the HE system and to the country as a whole.
Only in a very limited number of highly specialised and small-scale
subject areas might any greater intervention be required to protect
the national interest.
3.2 National Levels of Provision
Although of course there are wider societal
benefits from ensuring that a good proportion of our HE students
graduating from our Universities are educated in scientific subjects,
there can be no absolute or "right" figure for the number
of students in science subjects that the country needs to meet
its skilled manpower requirements. This is in part because some
of those manpower requirements will continue to be met by the
import of skilled staff from abroad. Although some evidence may
be beginning to emerge about skill shortages in some particular
subject areas, this of course may be as much the product of the
number of graduating students choosing to enter postgraduate or
postdoctoral training than a reflection of the absolute members
in science education and training. For it will of course be recognised
that many graduates in science, and not least in Chemistry, presently
choose to go straight into well-remunerated careers outwith science,
and career salaries within science show little sign of the upward
movement that would reflect any general skill shortage. Furthermore,
as set out in paragraph 2.3 above, the right way to address concerns
about the number of students coming into science is not by encouraging
the provision of unfilled university places but to encourage more
students to take relevant subjects at A level or equivalent, by
improving the quality of mathematics teaching in schools and by
making experimental science in schools more exciting.
3.3 Patterns of Access
The factors influencing science provision are
national or international in scale. Nevertheless, it does need
to be recognised that the overall pattern nationally of that provision
will need to be monitored and kept under review. We believe that
these considerations can be properly met within the policy processes
identified in paragraph 3.1 above and indeed would not envisage
that the outcome of such processes would denude any one region
of access to one or more sources of high quality expertise and
training in the relevant sciences. However, equally we see no
merit whatsoever in seeking to preserve uncompetitive and lower
quality provision merely to enable its continued availability
at the sub-regional or indeed regional level.
3.4 Resource Allocation
The Committee has raised in its call for evidence
questions concerning the possible impact of various aspects of
resource allocation. It is our view that the issues being addressed
by the Committee go far beyond the product of any particular aspects
of HEFCE's funding arrangements and are therefore generally unsusceptible
to tactical readjustment of those arrangements. Nevertheless,
some adjustments to resource allocation might help to smooth and
mediate the outcomes of the processes we have described. For example,
we feel there would be value in reviewing the resources associated
with the award of a grade 4 in the last RAE. Following that RAE,
the first priority was to provide resources to departments rated
5* and 5 to enable them to continue to compete internationally.
However, the overall level of resources available
was such that it proved necessary consequently to reduce the resources
attributable to grade 4, and that has led to a very steep funding
gradient indeed between grades 4 and 5. Yet grade 4 is intended
to represent research work of national importance. The new RAE
grading system which will apply in RAE 2008 may come to address
this issue if it is properly resourced, but in the meantime a
review of the resourcing of grade 4, without detriment to grade
5 and 5* through the allocation of additional resources as necessary,
would be of value.
4. In summary, we would contend that the
principal issues raised by this Inquiry reflect much wider and
longer-term considerations of research competitiveness and student
demand. These are primarily matters of national relevance and
significance, in some cases mainly requiring attention outwith
Higher Education. In response to these changes, processes and
policies need to be reinforced in order to permit universities
working together and in collaboration with HEFCE to shape science
provision constructively and efficiently. The pattern of provision
nationally might need to be kept under review, but this cannot
justify or sustain the preservation of uncompetitive and lower
quality provision at the sub-regional or indeed regional level.
We would of course be delighted to provide further
information and clarification as your Committee might require.
I should of course remind you that the Russell Group comprises
the Vice-Chancellors and Principals of the Universities of Birmingham,
Bristol, Cambridge, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Imperial College
London, King's College London, Leeds, Liverpool, London School
of Economics and Political Science, Manchester, Newcastle, Nottingham,
Oxford, Sheffield, Southampton, University College London and
Warwick.
January 2005
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