Examination of Witnesses (Questions 100
- 119)
MONDAY 7 FEBRUARY 2005
DANIELLE MILES,
IAN HUTTON,
AMY HUNTINGTON
AND STEPHEN
ROWLEY
Q100 Dr Iddon: Do you understand
the financial arguments or are they a bit too complicated for
students to get their heads around, do you think?
Ms Huntington: I understand some
of it, or I think I understand some of it; obviously I do not
understand the whole thing.
Q101 Chairman: You are in good company,
the lecturers do not either, so do not worry about that!
Ms Huntington: I understand that
the funding situation from HEFCE is not as ideal as it could be,
and certainly they are creating different bands that are not being
favourable towards the sciences.
Q102 Dr Iddon: What about the other
three students, do you have a view as to what is causing these
closures and whose fault is it? Who do you blame?
Ms Miles: I think it is financial,
as was said. Money needs to be put in to make money and they need
to put it into the right places and invest in the right places.
But I think money also needs to be invested in lower levels. I
know you all had good science teachers, but I obviously did not.
I mean, 12 of us started out on a chemistry course, which is quite
a small sixth form, and I was the only one who actually sat my
A Levels, and I feel that if we had teachers there, if we had
people who were enthusiastic about it more people would have wanted
to do it. I was thinking the other day, the whole Army recruitment
drive that has been going on with all the things on the television,
about how many different careers you can get in the Army, I feel
if something like that was done for the sciences, like if you
had TV adverts, with really random jobs that people would not
necessarily associate with having a chemistry degree, that would
give people the incentive to think, "Maybe I should do something
like that." I think it is where the money is placed is the
problem.
Dr Iddon: No risk to your life in the
Army, you just get a job!
Q103 Dr Turner: A lot of other degree
subjects actually depend on the basic sciences to underpin them.
For instance, Ian, you are doing a biology degree, but unless
biology at undergraduate level has changed since my day you have
to do a certain amount of chemistry, so you presumably spent some
time working in the chemistry department at UEA?
Mr Hutton: Not really; I did no
chemistry at university at all.
Q104 Dr Turner: It has changed then.
Mr Hutton: I think I did a ten-credit
unit in it in the first year as a top-up from A Level chemistry
for biologists; but there is no teaching within chemistry.
Q105 Dr Turner: So you would not
have felt that if your chemistry department was go to it would
affect you?
Mr Hutton: It would not affect
me, but it would affect people on other degree courses which were
related to biology, such as biochemistry, but because I am doing
straight biology everything I do is within the School for Biological
Sciences.
Q106 Dr Turner: Physics again is
one of the great enablers. Do you have to do a physics module
in your engineering course?
Mr Rowley: I did in the first
foundation years, yes.
Q107 Dr Turner: So your course would
have been undermined without a physics department?
Mr Rowley: Totally, yes.
Q108 Dr Turner: Does Aston still
have a physics department?
Mr Rowley: It does not actually
have a physics department itself, it is all part of the engineering
part.
Q109 Dr Turner: Do you feel that
that weakened the physics input into your degree?
Mr Rowley: I do not suppose so,
not in any major sense because most of it was engineering related
and so all the lecturers had a good knowledge of it, and I do
not think it was a problem.
Q110 Dr Turner: Have you noticed
ay impact on the other subjects in Newcastle with the impending
closure of undergraduate figures?
Ms Huntington: The joint programmes,
anything with maths and physics, chemistry and physics will have
ceased as well, but as far as I am aware—
Q111 Dr Turner: So it is having quite
an impact then. It is knocking out other subject choices on the
way?
Ms Huntington: Indirectly, yes.
Q112 Chairman: Why do you think we
need science graduates in this country at all, giving me a refreshing
view on that, please? You are starting your careers, as it were,
why do you think it is important to have science graduates? If
you had the Prime Minister in front of you, what would you say
to him, why you are important? Each of you come in at it, please.
Mr Hutton: At the commercial end
science is an industry and if Britain is going to compete then
Britain needs graduates and high profile scientists to be able
to keep that industry going.
Q113 Chairman: Amy?
Ms Huntington: Yes, British industry,
if you want to make your scientists and you want to make science
feasible then you need science graduates.
Q114 Chairman: Danielle?
Ms Miles: I think it is the only
way realistically to progress with the rest of the world into
the future, into the new technologies and to find out the development,
and without it you cannot carry on.
Q115 Chairman: Stephen?
Mr Rowley: There is no way it
can progress without civil engineers.
Q116 Chairman: My last question to
each of you again is: what do you enjoy most at university? Let
us take it for granted that you like the science and the course
that you are doing. You have told us that. But what is it that
is so magic about university, if at all? I know you are going
through hell at the moment, Danielle, but you must have had in
that time a few moments of pleasure.
Ms Miles: It is chemistry related
but it is to do with everyone at university; it is being able
to share knowledge, and to be given knowledge from people that
know more than you, and seeing their faces when they tell you
something and you finally actually understand what they are talking
about, and it all suddenly clicks into place. That is what it
is all about, the sharing of knowledge and learning more.
Q117 Chairman: Do you feel that,
Stephen?
Mr Rowley: Not to such a large
degree, but there is a lot of good stuff.
Q118 Chairman: Not as passionate
perhaps! Not as good teachers, perhaps! Ian?
Mr Hutton: Yes, I guess it is
the fact that you still have a certain amount of freedom; it is
not a nine to five job, and yet at the same time you are still
learning things and you still have a certain amount of responsibility,
and it is nice to have that mix really, and different aspects
of things in your life at that time.
Q119 Chairman: Amy?
Ms Huntington: I like learning
new things. I am nosy, I like finding things out, and I have to
admit from a personal point of view I like our department, our
staff, our academics, everything—it is just a really nice
place to be most of the time.
Chairman: So no regrets, any of you.
Can I say that you have been really very refreshing? You are a
great advert for the British university system. Thank you very
much, and stick with it. Danielle, I do hope it works out for
you. Thank you very much. You are very welcome to stay. Thank
you for taking time off. You may think you have contributed nothing,
but you have stimulated and enthused us again who may be getting
a bit old in the tooth and tired, but certainly it is nice to
see that it still goes on to the level it does, and we are examining
why things may be going a little wrong here and there. Thank you
very much.
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