Examination of Witnesses (Questions 220
- 239)
MONDAY 28 FEBRUARY 2005
PROFESSOR IAN
DIAMOND AND
PROFESSOR SIR
KEITH O'NIONS
Q220 Dr Harris: If it was the view
that this had gone too far or it was a bad thing to do for strategic
reasons to have this concentration—I am not asking you to
agree; I am just asking you to assume it as a policy decision—do
you think it is possible to reverse the trend to the degree to
which it is considered necessary to do so, which may not be a
lot, under the current system of dual support, or do you think
new structures or new streams would be required to do that?
Professor O'Nions: I think it
is an extremely important question and one I would like to be
taken very seriously, whether you are talking about chemistry,
whether you are talking about physics or whether you are talking
about modern languages. We have to look very carefully at the
effects of this on autonomous decisions that universities take
and view what the impact of that is on the national scene. Let
me just look at two sides. I will not say very much about the
Higher Education Funding Councils because you have probably got
the information you want there and what the Secretary of State
for Education asked the funding councils to do, and the committee
that is looking into strategic subjects on behalf of HEFCE under
Gareth Roberts. I will just move to the research council side
and I think it will be very clear in the allocations in a week
or so's time. Well before SRO4 reported we were looking very carefully
at what we called health of disciplines, ie, those subject areas
which were going in the wrong direction for the perceived need
of international quality or the national need. This has been addressed.
We will respond in the allocations to the priorities of the research
councils. To give you a flavour of where some of the very strong
arguments were made, there were significant concerns around the
areas of the physical sciences, some aspects of engineering and
so on in health of disciplines, and I think you will see that
that has been responded to and there are others too, in the allocations.
The answer is, absolutely yes. Clearly my responsibility is more
on the research side so we are responding there. I think there
is both funding and structure in the Higher Education Funding
Councils for them to take a considered view. That is the answer
to a hypothetical question.
Q221 Dr Harris: I just want to make
sure I understood your answer. If it was considered that something
would have to be done to reverse this trend towards research concentration
do you think the structure is adequate despite or because of dual
support and that there is enough flow of funding in the flexible
pipeline you are describing of health of disciplines, not only
flexible but supposedly tasked towards these issues in order to
achieve a policy change in respect of concentration, if that was
what was required?
Professor O'Nions: As you repeated
the question I have either understood it better or it had a slightly
different twist to it. If it is a matter of reversing the concentration
all the statements that I made about responding to health of disciplines
in a research mode would not necessarily do anything about concentration
into numbers of universities because we are responding to the
health of that subject in a research centre across the nation,
and it may or may not result in a distribution between numbers
of universities. When one looks at it from a Higher Education
Funding Council point of view, where you are looking primarily
at undergraduate teaching and support of that, then their ability
to intervene is I think really dependent upon views that ministers
have yet to take and I would not like to second-guess the work
that they have been doing. Is the machinery there in the Higher
Education Funding Councils? Wait and see is my answer.
Q222 Dr Harris: Let us say that ministers
came to you, and I am not asking you to pre-empt that; I am giving
you a hypothetical situation, what advice would you give them?
Sir Keith, with the dual support system is it your view, and we
will be asking HEFCE what they think of you as well, that the
structure here is sufficient if you change policy to reverse this
move towards research concentration or would you be advising—and
obviously this is only general policy—that one would have
to really change the structure if that was the path that ministers
wanted to go down?
Professor O'Nions: If the question
was, do I think it would be a good policy to reverse the research
concentration in our universities through the behaviour of the
research councils such that—
Q223 Dr Harris: And HEFCE.
Professor O'Nions: Let me just
deal with one. There is a disconnect. They are very much arm's
length from one another—then my advice on research council
funding would be no because I think a policy where you respond
to the best people, wherever they are and wherever they happen
to be in the system, is the right one and it is the only one that
is sensible for the research councils. When you come to the Higher
Education Funding Councils that are looking at departments and
their performance and so on, obviously they have some different
levers available to them. My answer would be no, frankly, on the
allocation of research funds of research councils. In terms of
Higher Education Funding Councils all sorts of other things are
happening and without digressing some quite different things are
beginning to happen in Scotland which are rather interesting.
Q224 Dr Harris: My second question
is around whether there is an vicious cycle. If again one takes
the view that strategically we ought not to have such a concentration
because we might want to broaden and deepen at some point, and
we cannot do that if we are very concentrated already, do you
see the danger that some institutions that are falling behind
on getting funding from either arm simply do not have the critical
mass ever to be able to catch up again because they just do not
have the research infrastructure if they are not getting the RAE
funding, such as the step? Again, if you were advising about the
need to have flexibility in capacity would that be something that
we would need to change on that basis?
Professor O'Nions: I understand
your point and I understand the question, but what this would
be appealing to is, do we have the wherewithal or the desire to
move away from the situation where 55% of our research active
staff returned in research assessment exercises are now in 5*/5
departments in relatively large concentrations? To reverse that
is I think very undesirable at the present time. A large amount
of funds may be able to do that but to move away from the international
excellence that that has been achieved to distribute the things
more widely is a policy which would be curious to follow after
all the benefits in terms of international competitiveness and
career structures that the selective funding and "concentration"
have achieved.
Q225 Dr Harris: The other part of
this vicious cycle is that, given that many research councils,
quite rightly, one might say, require evidence of multidisciplinary
cross-departmental working, and indeed that is attractive and
recommended, and that is clearly easier to do within an institution
than across institutions, whatever anyone says, is it right that
isolated departments that are excellent and are still getting
the research council grants find it harder to do that at the same
level of excellence because they do not have the mass of well-funded
other departments around them with which to interact in a multidisciplinary
way to attract these cross-cutting research grants that research
councils are so keen on?
Professor Diamond: I take your
point but I do feel that many of the research councils have in
place strategies which enable the opportunities for those kinds
of links to happen. You simply do not great interdisciplinary
research happening by enabling people to just get together in
five minutes. You have to enable the conversations to take place
over time. Research councils do fund seminar series, for example,
which enable the best researchers, wherever they are from, to
come together, to talk, to start to get these interdisciplinary
conversations going. While I take your point that it may be easier
to get that across the same institution, we are not in this country
in a position where the geography is so enormous that we cannot
enable conversations to start and we have, through for example
the development of the e-science the ability for councils to work
together across universities and very many do. I think you will
find a very high proportion of many of the research council grants
go to colleagues from more than one university.
Q226 Dr Iddon: Do you see any need
for a strong regional research presence?
Professor O'Nions: I turns out
that most regions in the UK do have a presence of 5* and 5 departments.
I do not think we have a full enough analysis of the situation
to know whether it would have a deleterious effect on a particular
region if it did not have one or two 5* departments in strategically
important subjects. If you asked the question, is there a regional
role for the university system to engage with commerce and innovation
and so on, most certainly yes, and particularly when you widen
it away from the so-called elite or non-research intensive universities,
but I will not repeat the same points that I made to the Chairman
at the beginning of this evidence.
Q227 Dr Iddon: Professor Diamond,
do you have any difficulty in squaring your commitment to the
research councils funding excellence wherever you find it with
promoting a regional research presence?
Professor Diamond: No, we do not.
We work very closely with the RDAs and I believe over the next
couple of years we will be working more closely with them. Different
councils sit on, for example, on the science committees of different
RDAs and where appropriate regional activity happens. In some
of the research councils research precisely on regional economy
is a terribly important thing. I think it is important that we
do have regional strategies. I think it is deeply important for
this country that we interact with the RDAs and the regions but
I think it is a real problem that that disengages with the policy
that we really must fund the very best science work where we find
it.
Q228 Dr Iddon: Professor O'Nions,
you were in praise of the regional clustering of universities
and businesses in the innovation process as being good for the
economy. What evidence have you got to demonstrate that this does
actually work successfully and are you carrying out any investigations
to justify this?
Professor O'Nions: That is an
important question. Given the very small number of years for which
this innovation fund has been running, and it is only a few, I
think it is too early for us to hold out great successes of innovation
and green shoots and so on. Probably what we are looking at, and
I am talking a great deal to universities in various parts of
the country at the moment, is evidence of a high level of activity
and also enthusiasm for that engagement. Rationally at this stage
it is that level of activity and the enthusiasm with which that
is taking place on both sides, the university side and the business
side, which is what we would appeal to. Yes, I agree. At some
point, after sustained investment in these areas, we actually
have to be very clear about what it is delivering. On this particular
one we are still a few years away from a reasonable expectation
of seeing measurable economic benefit.
Professor Diamond: There is some
really interesting ESRC research from the University of Nottingham
on the best practice for spinning out, so there is research going
on about it. I absolutely agree with what Keith is saying, that
it will take a few more years before we can properly judge the
economic impact of that. One can see initially a number of high
profile successes.
Q229 Dr Iddon: Given that the regional
programme is successful are you convinced that there are enough
jobs, proper graduate jobs, in the regions for graduates that
emerge from those universities?
Professor O'Nions: I can speak
on a couple of subjects where I have information but I am not
sure how long the Chairman wants to persist.
Q230 Chairman: One example will do.
Professor O'Nions: Perhaps I can
take physics and chemistry as a combined example. I was anticipating
that this may be where you would focus. We know a lot about the
supply side and all the statistical information on that, but on
the demand side by business, ie, are there enough people in those
areas and are there jobs, again, we do not have absolutely thorough
demographic analysis. At the centre we have not considered doing
this, but there is a lot of anecdotal evidence through the Royal
Society of Chemistry and the Institute of Physics and a recent
report which PricewaterhouseCooper did for both of those organisations
and there is no question that they are employed very quickly.
If anything there is occasionally on an anecdotal basis a shortage
of supply of people of the right calibre. Given the percentages
of graduates from that who go purely into physics or chemistry
type employment, I do not think getting jobs is any problem and
in fact their lifetime salary is very substantially higher than
in any other area of graduates. If you would like more detail
I am very happy to write and give you the information.
Q231 Dr Iddon: The introduction of
top-up fees has provided something of a price barrier to students
and something of an incentive to study closer to home if they
can. Do you think that the regional undergraduate science provision
is sufficient to cater for this possibility or do we have to accept
that students are going to have to leave their region if they
want to do chemistry or physics or whatever?
Professor Diamond: I think we
very simply have to look at the demographics of what the demand
will be. It is not absolutely clear at the moment that there will
be large numbers of students who will be forced to travel who
would not have been forced to travel in the first place. You would
need to study that in further detail.
Q232 Paul Farrelly: Variable tuition
fees have just been mentioned. I have got a concern about the
possibility that the pressure which is already within the system
from the research assessment exercise that we are already seeing
may be reinforced by the introduction of a limited market. For
example, those institutions best able to command the top fees
of £3,000 or more in the future are likely to be the ones
that succeed even more in the future rather than those that are
able to charge lesser amounts. Do you have any concerns that there
may be self-reinforcing effects or have you seen any evidence
in the way that scientists position themselves in the future market
that this is already taking place?
Professor O'Nions: I do not have
a deep analysis but if you ask the question have I seen any evidence
of that, at this stage no, I have not. Am I concerned about it?
Taking off my research council hat and all the rest of it, I am
quite concerned as to what sort of behaviours this may drive.
We have to wait and see. My experience in most things to do with
education and science is that when you change the rules a little
bit it may be totally well-intentioned and so on but one often
induces some behaviour which one might not have anticipated. All
I can say is that we have to look at this and watch it very carefully.
Q233 Paul Farrelly: At which point
do you think it might be appropriate to take stock and produce
some kind of meaningful analysis? At what point in time?
Professor O'Nions: Within the
United Kingdom we have several games in play at the same time.
We have a different game in England than what is going on in Scotland
so we will have the national comparisons there. I suspect that
two or three or four years down the road we should start to see
some of the trends emerging through applications and we will have
to watch it very carefully.
Professor Diamond: I suspect this
is an area which is going to be researched fairly heavily by funders
to ensure that there are some things like milestone check times
just to see how things are going.
Q234 Dr Turner: To what extent should
skill shortages be taken into account when the government sets
its higher education policy? Do you think skills shortages justify
the intervention of the government in the affairs of individual
universities? I do not have to remind you of recent examples.
Professor O'Nions: I think skill
shortages are something governments have to take seriously. As
I said, in effect we have been looking at skill shortages and
health of disciplines in a number of areas. Let me again allude
to one that should appear and I expect will appear in the allocations
of funding councils. Research councils have expressed their concerns
as to whether we have an adequate skill set to support the present
White Paper on energy, keeping the Nuclear options open, across
the piece. I think that is a legitimate area to intervene in and
to respond to those skills. That is relatively easy and proper
to do with research councils. Intervening in the affairs of an
individual university and maintaining their autonomy is obviously
a much more sensitive area but if the collective decisions are
autonomous decisions and are driving things not within the national
interest, we have to have a response there. I think everybody
would want to stop short of intervening in the affairs directly
of a university. That would be a very big change for us, but I
think there are probably other ways of loading the dice and shifting
the playing field. I think that is a responsibility of government.
Q235 Chairman: But have we got target
numbers in mind? How many plumbers do we need? How many doctors
do we need? I can never find figures. Do you know figures?
Professor O'Nions: Even on physics
and chemistry where you might have expected I had done a reasonable
amount of homework in advance of this meeting, I come clean and
say that we cannot go very much beyond the anecdotal evidence
of whether supply is meeting demand and what the demand is. It
is not bad news but we do not have from those particular areas
that sort of analysis. Those numbers go up and down but I do not
think we have good trend numbers.
Q236 Chairman: So we do not have
a national plan of how many physicists and chemists and medical
students we need or what?
Professor O'Nions: Not that I
have noticed. I believe we should look at the very least at the
feasibility of doing research in that area which gives us an outcome
that is robust and has meaning.
Q237 Chairman: Do you not find this
very worrying, that you do not know why you are educating people
for jobs?
Professor O'Nions: With respect,
I think we know why we are educating people.
Q238 Chairman: Yes, but I mean for
jobs.
Professor O'Nions: There is not
a one-to-one correlation between what people do in a degree and
what sort of job they do. People in particle physics and astronomy
go off and do other sorts of things and are much welcomed by their
employers. There are numerous employers who will say, "We
actually quite like hiring somebody that has come out of an astrophysics
undergraduate degree" or this, that and the other. I think
it is a very difficult thing to do.
Q239 Chairman: There is a real contradiction
here, Ian, is there not, because you believe in telling me numbers,
do you not? I thought I saw it in your evidence.
Professor Diamond: We are very
comfortable that at a research council level if our task is to
ensure the future health of the research base then we can start
to make some estimates of the numbers of researchers (or academics
more broadly defined) that would be required to maintain a healthy
research base. We have given you the paper which RCUK has put
together. That is one aspect of this entire question. We do have
a pretty good handle on the demand for the academic research end.
That particular paper which you have seen is being extended and
over the summer we will be taking into account the business and
industry demand for research level people so that we can talk
about that. That is at the PhD level. I do believe that there
is potentially a need to take this question further forward and
to ask some questions about whether you have likely demand for
people with different skills. That is a different piece of research
and a piece of research that would need to be done. That is taking,
if you like, the demand for undergraduates with particular skills.
At the higher level that is work that has been done for researchers
and is currently being extended for industry.
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