Annex
QUANTITATIVE EVIDENCE:
QUESTIONNAIRE RESULTS
The House of Commons Science and Technology
Committee is inquiring into actions that will ensure an adequate
level of science teaching and research in English universities
This inquiry follows several recent high-profile closures of university
chemistry, physics, mathematics and engineering departments.
We would appreciate your briefly expressing
opinions through the following questions, which cover several
of the key points of the enquiry. All questions refer to science
departments in the English university system, but they clearly
have implications for universities in Scotland, Wales and Northern
Ireland.
1. How has HEFCE's research funding, based
on RAE ratings, affected the financial viability of science departments?
Very negatively (47%)/negatively (44%)/neutral(7%)/positively(0%)/very
positively(0%)
2. How desirable is it to increase the concentration
of scientific research into a few departments?
Very desirable(9%)/desirable(9%)/neutral(6%)/undesirable(45%)/very
undesirable(39%)
3. How desirable are teaching-only science
departments?
Very desirable(0%)/desirable(9%)/neutral(6%)/undesirable(40%)/entirely
undesirable(46%)
4. How financially viable are teaching-only
science departments?
Completely viable(3%)/viable(9%)/neutral(32%)/non-viable(44%)/utterly
non-viable(12%)
5. How important is it to maintain a regional
capacity in science teaching and research?
Very important(68%)/important(29%)/neutral(3%)/unimportant(0%)/entirely
unimportant(0%)
6. Should the Government intervene to ensure
continued provision of scientific subjects of strategic national
or regional importance?
Yes(91%)/No(9%)
QUALITATIVE EVIDENCE:
SELECTED MEMBERS'
RESPONSES
"We desperately need trained science teachers
in the schools. Government intervention to SUPPORT science may
be necessary but it MUST ONLY be carried out in consultation with
the universities and MUST take school provision into account".
"It is entirely wrong to believe that good
research can only come from established centres . . . The history
of science from Galileo on shows that new ideas and breakthroughs
come from those on the edge of convention, not the recognised
establishment. Fund diversity, not complacency".
"Many actions of Government have exactly
the opposite effects of the ones intended. The RAE exercise is
one. Research results are smeared as thinly as possible to produce
repetitive publications in journals which university libraries
can no longer afford and which few people, none from industry,
will ever read. The primary aim of big laboratories is to strangle
infant rivals. Many useful activities which are hard to count
are treated as valueless".
"As the RAE bites, better qualified scientists
will drift to higher rated departments, thus removing teaching
competence for honours and for instructional masters from hitherto
highly competent departments. Non research departments will be
unable to recruit lively staff. The sad thing is that the Government
. . . have allowed a handful of old universities to return the
national situation to that which applied in the old days—good
provision for the few. The impact on science teaching nationally
will be exceptionally hard".
"This should not be a consultation of English
but of all British Science Faculties . . . Teaching-only should
not be considered unless there is a direct arrangement to use
them as feeders into high quality, laboratory-based, research-informed
Honours courses. All good laboratory science teaching is, in effect,
subsidised by research income and so teaching-only science Departments
are not only academically undesirable, they have no real chance
of being financially viable.
It is very important to link the number of laboratory-trained
science graduates to the numbers of jobs available in each part
of the country. That does not necessarily mean that the graduates
need to have been taught in that part of the country.
The Government should intervene in the sense
of funding laboratory-based courses at the correct full economic
cost. They should NOT even consider telling individual HEIs what
they should and should not teach. There should indeed be figures
readily available for the numbers of, say, Honours Chemists that
the country (the UK) needs on an annual basis".
"It has been an error in public policy
regarding higher education in science to separate teaching from
research, particularly as the research funding has been skewed
by the RAE rating system . . . The inevitable result is evidenced
by recent closures of perfectly sound science departments.
The choice is either (1) to make teaching-only
science departments financially viable by assigning large-scale
funding to support them; or (2) to abandon the inequitable research
funding system and return to the concept of the `well-found laboratory'
that underpinned all university science departments in the past.
The first choice will generate an unnecessary and educationally
divisive distinction between science degrees from different institutions.
The second alternative appears to offer a rational and desirable
objective of national science policy in higher education".
"I am an applied mathematician and that
mathematics is one of the most fundamental and at the same time
one of the cheapest sciences. British science has been very successful
in the past, and cheap at the same time. No country has been more
successful or cheaper. In science there is a natural pattern of
growth which is not well understood . . . read the history of
science".
"Issues that I think are important . .
. notably to do with the labour market for trained scientists
in the UK, their career prospects and wage rates . . . wage rates
are not great and career prospects are often very uncertain, given
which it is far from irrational for young people to turn away
from science. The share of industry, especially chemicals, in
our economy continues to fall, and you only need to look at the
back pages of New Scientist to get an idea of the poor wage rates
on offer for really experienced scientists".
"The separation of teaching and research
in a university setting would undoubtedly have a deleterious effect
on recruitment of young scientists of the future. Science-only
departments or support for only a handful of science departments
will undoubtedly lose the exceptionally gifted young scientists
who arise. . . in the smaller universities".
"Professor of Applied Mathematics . . .
During the last 60 years the world has been turned upside down
by the computer, a mathematical device . . . also by the Internet,
depending on cryptography, a branch of mathematics. Much of the
progress came from the UK. The Committee should consider how the
rigid constraints now fashionable would have operated 60 years
ago. Clearly these developments would never have come into being
. . ."
"the best form of teaching, whatever the
subject, is carried out and received in an atmosphere of research
. . . it is imperative we maintain if the UK is to produce world-class
scientists and engineers who can keep UK plc at the forefront
internationally. . . ."
"The Government should take positive steps
to stop the current `brain drain' from academic research as well
as promoting science and engineering amongst university graduates
through the availability of more government/industry sponsored
academic post provisions across the universities. Where such or
similar schemes already exist, science and engineering should
be given a higher priority . . ."
"Downscaling science at the current rate
is strategically dangerous. It is destroying valuable intellectual
assets, and indeed a whole `research ecology', that could take
a century to re-build. These assets, and this system, are critical
to the performance of an innovative, knowledge intensive economy
like the UK".
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