APPENDIX 77
Memorandum from QinetiQ
INTRODUCTION
1. QinetiQ is Europe's largest integrated
R&D organisation, with nearly 9,000 employees throughout Britain,
over 7,000 of them scientists and engineers and including some
1,000 PhDs. Their first degrees cover a wide range of disciplines,
but there is a predominance of physics, mathematics, electronic
engineering and computer science graduates. QinetiQ aims to recruit
around 300 graduates each year (this year: 143 between April and
September), and is thus one of the foremost employers of new science
and technology graduates in the UK. The subject of the Committee's
inquiry is thus of great importance to us.
2. QinetiQ offers a wide range of world-class
capabilities to a customer base which is expanding steadily beyond
its traditional defence business, both in the UK and globally.
In order to maintain this position of excellence, it needs continually
to maintain and enhance its staff of top-of-class science and
technology graduates.
THE IMPORTANCE
TO THE
ECONOMY OF
ENCOURAGING SCIENCE
IN BRITISH
UNIVERSITIES
3. An assured supply of well-qualified and
enthusiastic graduates is essential to the maintenance of a thriving
modern economy and a sophisticated industrial base. The UK defence
and security industries, with which QinetiQ is closely interlocked,
enjoy a world-class reputation, and such an intake of science
graduates from home universities is essential to the maintenance
of that reputation.
4. For these industries to continue to compete
on the world stage, they must offer challenging jobs to attract
graduates and encourage sixth-formers to choose science and technology
as an option when deciding their route through university. Increasingly
the need to do this is recognised.
5. Although the SET for Success review,
published in April 2002 by Sir Gareth Roberts, found an overall
increase in students seeking science and technical qualifications,
it also reported a downturn in the numbers following courses in
physical sciences, mathematics and engineering. These trends would
be worrying if continued over the medium term.
6. The Secretary of State for Trade and
Industry recognised in launching the DTI's Five Year Programme
Creating Wealth from Knowledge in November 2004 that science
and technology are the key to Britain's continued industrial and
economic success. It is implicit in her comments that enough graduates
must be available in these fields for the science- and knowledge-based
industries to achieve their potential.
7. These reports point to a single conclusion:
that the future of "UK plc" is dependent on our competing
successfully with rising science and technology capabilities in
other countries, particularly in Asia. Unless we maintain and
nurture our standards through higher education, particularly in
maths, the sciences, technology and engineering, we will struggle
to hold our ground in the world economy in 10 years' time.
THE IMPORTANCE
OF UK GRADUATES
TO DEFENCE
WORK
8. Only high quality UK national science
and engineering graduates can take the nation's defence technology
industry forward to protect its defence interests in the future
and maintain the UK's reputation in this field of expertise. Were
the supply of UK national graduates from home universities in
key scientific disciplines to dry up or their quality to deteriorate,
vital research would, in time, simply not be done and Britain's
ability to defend itself would be in jeopardy.
9. A particular issue for the UK knowledge
base, in which the defence and security industries have a particular
stake, is the propensity of many English universities to take
students from overseas in preference to UK students. Oxford University
is the latest to declare a reduction in places for British students
and an increase on places for foreign students. While the Government
has removed some barriers to overseas students remaining in the
UK after completing their PhD, the overwhelming majority will
at some stage in their career return home, taking the knowledge
with them and strengthening the competitiveness of their overseas
parent country.
10. While increasing the number of foreign
students and researchers in UK universities has many desirable
effects, it would be totally counterproductive if it were at the
expense of UK nationals who would therefore be denied a role in
important UK science base industries.
QINETIQ'S
EXPERIENCE OF
GRADUATE RECRUITMENT
11. QinetiQ goes to great lengths to recruit
graduates with high levels of attainment, a positive attitude
and the potential to achieve, and has won awards for its recruitment
campaigns from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development,
including the prestigious 2004 Grand Prix Award. Our presence
at career fairs in universities is central to this, and the presentation
of science and engineering to the young as a stimulating and enjoyable
career to pursue is at the core of all such activity.
12. QinetiQ encourages students from an
early age to take an interest in science, arranging school visits
to its research centres and participating in competitions like
Young Scientist of the Year. It is one of the most active companies
in the Year in Industry programme, taking 37 students in the financial
year to this April and winning the scheme's Best Partner award.
13. We are nevertheless finding it each
year more difficult to recruit the necessary quality of staff
and, unchecked, this is likely to become more and more of a problem
until it becomes critical for us, the UK defence industry and
British industry generally.
14. This experience confirms the conclusion
of the SET for Success review that the "disconnect"
between the strengthening demand for graduates on the one hand
and the declining numbers of mathematics, engineering and physical
science graduates on the other is starting to result in skills
shortages. Initially this is felt at the bottom of the pyramid,
but in due course it could work its way through to senior level.
THE IMPORTANCE
OF UNIVERSITY
RESEARCH
15. Historically the government research
establishments that now make up QinetiQ were responsible for the
creative process which goes from scientific invention through
to application in the field.
16. The decline of the MoD's research budget
(having once been on a par with the OST budget, by 2006 it will
be about one-seventh) has meant that the UK is now far more dependent
upon university research yielding the basic insight from which
QinetiQ scientists can explore the innovations which lead to the
equipments which enable armed forces to be successful in their
missions.
17. This is not well understood, nor is
it compatible with the increasing overseas orientation of our
universities.
February 2005
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