Examination of Witnesses (Questions 240
- 259)
MONDAY 28 FEBRUARY 2005
PROFESSOR IAN
DIAMOND AND
PROFESSOR SIR
KEITH O'NIONS
Q240 Dr Harris: Keith, you said that
the evidence from employers about skill shortages was anecdotal
even with physics and chemistry. Are you taking too narrow a definition
of employers because I would have thought that a group of employers
would be all secondary school science departments where there
is very clear data evidence for skill shortage. Should we not
be thinking more widely than industry when looking at the health
of science and is there not good data to suggest that we are desperately
short of science graduates?
Professor O'Nions: I accept that
criticism totally and I was taking that more narrowly. Where we
have got evidence which is a bit beyond the anecdotal. We have
talked to the Institute of Physics and the Royal Society of Chemistry
and organisations of that sort which are representing the professions,
and you are absolutely right: if you look at where these graduates
go at PhD level and so on, teaching and schools and that sector
does have a very big demand and clearly there are not enough people.
That goes beyond the anecdotal. That is fact. In terms of employment
outside that sector, whether it is people who are employed as
a chemist or a physicist or a pharmacist or go into sectors where
those skills are welcome, then I have nothing to add to what Ian
has said.
Professor Diamond: I think we
would all agree, for example, that in the IOP data that 60% of
all physics graduates should end up as schoolteachers to fill
the demand is hard data that we should accept. Having said that,
there is more than just a supply issue from the higher education
system that we are going to have to address. It has to be attractive
to become a physics teacher in a school and there is a whole set
of questions there that we really do have to get on board.
Q241 Mr Key: Chairman, we know that
46.1% of academic staff in civil engineering, 45.6% of academic
staff in mathematics are aged 50 or over. Please can you give
us your take on the retirement time bomb?
Professor Diamond: I have spoken
to you twice before on this. It is something we take extremely
seriously. Anyone who gives a presentation on just about anything
at the moment sees my graphs on this. It is a critical issue and
it is one where I suspect the allocations process will see a number
of initiatives which are being aimed at addressing this. I can
speak for the ESRC where it is likely that our strategic plan
will particularly say things about areas such as economics or
social science where the sorts of percentages are not unlike those
you have just described.
Q242 Dr Turner: There is evidence
that suggests that the UK does have sufficient science graduates
but what it does not have is a business sector that has created
sufficient demand for them. What do you think government could
take to encourage demand for science graduates for employers?
If there is no demand for science graduates then the incentive
for students to enter science degrees is clearly undermined.
Professor Diamond: That is a fair
point. If there were streams of science graduates in the unemployed
queue then we would have to worry but I do think it is important
that government and indeed the research councils engage with industry
to identify what the demand is and to encourage it more. I think
Keith probably will agree that the science investment framework,
the achievement of which does require an increased engagement
with industry and the funders' forum, has meetings with industry
to ensure that starts to happen, is an essential part of this
agenda.
Professor O'Nions: I am looking
at the precise numbers. Looking at production of graduates in
the UK, both graduates in the various sciences and PhDs, the numbers
have grown very considerably. We have gone back just over the
last ten years and our total number of science and engineering
graduates has grown very substantially, I can give you the precise
numbers if you want them, and so have our PhD graduates also grown.
It is a fact though that most of that growth is in the life sciences
with a very big increase in the biomedical and life sciences,
which has been very healthy, and a large number of women have
also gone into that which is good news, so there is a very strong
perception that there are job opportunities both in the public
and private sectors. There has been a relative decrease in physical
sciences and engineering over the same period and so I think probably
your interpretation of that is correct. Also, in terms of PhD
output, there is an overall decrease in chemistry and it is fairly
even in physics. We have seen a big growth overall but it is very
strongly concentrated at the biomedical/life science end. The
point you made certainly applies to the physical sciences.
Q243 Dr Harris: Another point that
has been made by industry is that although there are ample science
graduates as far as they are concerned, they do have concern about
whether they have the right practical skills for their purposes.
What do you suggest universities can do about that?
Professor O'Nions: Where practical
education is deficient in both research and vocational mode, whether
it be in life sciences or whether it be in laboratory chemistry,
then I think it is for universities to listen very carefully to
that and respond accordingly.
Q244 Dr Iddon: We saw some students
recently who felt that science careers were not as lucrative or
presented as stable a prospect as some other careers. Do you think
they are right?
Professor O'Nions: You could answer
for that in all sorts of ways. If we look at the biomedical and
life sciences end and prospects in the pharmaceutical industry
in this country, which is one of our very powerful sectors, that
might not be true. If you go to some other areas probably people
realise that the way to the top in many business is not to try
and build up a scientific career but to shift to the management
side quite quickly. I think perceptions probably differ a great
deal from one area to another, depending upon their view of where
the UK economy is going, and over a generation we have seen a
pretty big shift from manufacturing to services. The services
sector offers very many exciting careers for many people. With
some exceptions it is rather less R&D intensive than aerospace
or pharmaceuticals.
Q245 Dr Jack: On the other hand the
Institute of Physics and the Royal Society of Chemistry have recently
published a survey which they have carried out which shows that
science graduates earn more than their counterparts in the arts
and humanities. Why do you think that is the case?
Professor O'Nions: I hope they
are comparing like with like. I have also seen that and I think
that over a career it is something like £187,000 higher overall
salary for a PhD graduate in physical sciences relative to an
arts and humanities graduate. Assuming that they are comparing
like with like, I think it probably shows the salary differentials
that are often the case. At least half of our physical science
graduates go into business and into industry and salaries there
have become more competitive.
Professor Diamond: That was at
PhD level. A very high proportion of the arts and humanities graduates
go into academia. I think you commented that there are relative
differentials there and elsewhere.
Q246 Dr Iddon: Do you know what percentage
of science graduates enter into a career in science as distinct
from going elsewhere?
Professor O'Nions: I do, but if
you will bear with me and ask a different question, I will come
back to that and find you the number.
Q247 Chairman: Professor O'Nions,
you can send it in to us if you like.
Professor O'Nions: Okay.
Q248 Dr Iddon: My last question is
do you think it is possible for science graduates to earn as much
in a science career as they can by going into a city career, for
example?
Professor Diamond: There is a
fundamental caveat which you have to ask and that is to say how
successful are they going to be? If you go into the city and if
you are hugely successful, you might make more than in a science
career. Then there is the distribution, if you look at the average
scientist who is going into a decent career, for example the pharmaceutical
industry, then I suspect the career earnings would be similar
to the average person going into the financial sector and they
may even have a more secure job. I think I have to say we need
to look very carefully at the data, but it is not necessarily
the case that the differentials are huge. I am happy to see what
data exist.
Professor O'Nions: Of all the
PhDs who graduated in physical science and engineering in 2003,
79% of them were in jobs in 2004, which is very good news, and
42% were in jobs where they were in research roles and of those
about half were in the educational system.
Q249 Chairman: Professor O'Nions,
I have seen dozens of figures like that, but they only last for
one year, then students disappear into the world and we do not
have a second year, a fifth year or a 10th year.
Professor O'Nions: You are absolutely
right. That is first destination data, but it is the data which
we have. It is extremely difficult. What I would love to have
is second and tertiary data and see how people's careers develop
and see what value they have added. It is very, very hard to get
that information, but it is the sort of thing we must collect
progressively.
Professor Diamond: There is some
research by Peter Elias, at the University of Warrick,
which I do not have the results of on the tip of my tongue, but
I will let you have them, which uses some of the very rich cohort
data that we have to answer some of those questions.
Chairman: If you think it is worth going
into science, then prove it to us from the data you have got.
Q250 Dr Iddon: We were talking earlier
about the concentration of research in a fairly limited number
of universities. Is there any evidence now being accrued that
students coming out of those particular universities attract higher
career salaries than students coming out of the other universities?
Professor O'Nions: If there is
data on that, with apology, I am afraid I do not know the answer
to that question.
Q251 Dr Iddon: It does not exist
at the moment?
Professor O'Nions: If it does,
I have not come across it. I think we should drop you a note to
say yea or nay on that.
Q252 Paul Farrelly: The issue of
science departments closing landed right on my doorstep in Newcastle-under-Lyme,
before Christmas because Keele University became one of those
that is proposing to close its physics department and had some
difficulties in sustaining its chemistry department previously.
My concern is not research, although it would be lovely to have
lots of five-star rated research departments at the universities,
my concern is teaching. There was a possibility that the students
in my area, who wanted or had to stay local, were not going to
have, in North Staffordshire, any courses where they could learn
physics as well as other subjects. I want to touch on an aspect
of the White Paper, which has not been developed, which is the
creation and the obstacles of the creation of teaching-only departments
in science. What is your view on that and how does the system
work? Is it stacked for or against the creation of good teaching
departments? If the system can be improved, particularly in terms
of funding, what can we do to create good teaching-only departments?
Professor O'Nions: I completely
share your concerns and I worry as much as you do about only being
able to teach if you have a simple connectivity to world class
research. I believe that is going to mean teaching will take place
in about the same number of departments where research is going
on, which is a couple of tens at that sort of level, and it is
extremely important. I think when we moved to a system of 130
universities, which we have at the moment, very often it took
some time for universities to figure out where they were going
to go and whether the whole thing had to be academics spending
50% of the time doing research and 50% of the time teaching. It
is absolutely clear that is not a situation which exists or, indeed,
could be sustained into the future. Your question as to how we
have good teaching in departments which are not research intensive
at the international or even national level, in some cases, is
immensely important. There are many good worked examples in the
US. I think it is an area where we have to focus very hard and
we need very good quality teaching in universities which are not
research intensive. It is the way forward. Graham Davies had a
look at that, but there is a lot more work to do. I really think
it is a key point.
Q253 Paul Farrelly: Clearly in this
respect, following the White Paper we have to focus on the variable
tuition fees and the rest of the White Paper, certainly in the
public eye, in terms of creating good teaching standing alone
from good research to my mind is not being pursued. Do you agree
the Government must do more to pursue this?
Professor O'Nions: I do and I
think there is a cultural thing here. Looking at some of the private
and state funded universities in the US, they are very proud to
attract an extremely good calibre across Massachusetts, New Hampshire,
and so on. They have first class teaching, they attract good staff
and they stop at the Masters level of teaching. They hold their
heads high and are proud of what they do and in no sense do they
feel they are second rate because they are not research intensive.
I do not think we are quite at that point yet in the UK, where,
being a non-research intensive university which has a very high
quality of teaching, all of those are simultaneously holding their
heads high and confident in the way they are going forward. You
may find many exceptions to that, but culturally I do not think
we are quite at that point.
Professor Diamond: I believe what
we have to do is be able to celebrate those departments and ensure
the proper links exist between those departments and the research
intensives so it is perfectly possible and perfectly acceptable
for students who have gone through their initial training there
to then move to the research intensive universities, for example
to do a PhD or whatever, and the links exist and there is a kind
of interaction. Where there are academics who wish to develop
a research activity, even though they are working in a teaching
intensive university, those links exist as well to enable that
to happen. There are many examples of how that can happen. I would
agree with Keith about the United States of America and I believe
there are some examples here if we search for them. In my view,
what we need to do is make the point that there are not just some
examples they have been searching for, but there are a number
of examples.
Q254 Mr McWalter: Thank you, Chairman.
Apologies to you and to our witnesses for an afternoon where
I have been scudding in and out. I have a particular interest
in mathematics, as Professor Diamond will know, and if I may,
I would like to ask you a question. Professor Diamond, you know
in your area there are simply not enough people with the appropriate
mathematical statistical skills to be able to do some of the work
which you would like to see going on, yet, at the same time, we
read that the mathematics department at Hull University is about
to shut. The reason why is because the Dual Support System has
somehow not come up with the funds to allow that activity to subsist
and yet, if that was being provided and if people were going to
a department like that, which historically has always had a very
good record, that might be providing us with just the people with
the skills that could then integrate their work with social science
and do some of the work which, Professor Diamond, you acknowledge
to be absolutely desirable. There is a direct contact between
losing these departments and losing the capacity to do the sort
of research we need. I am very surprised to hear from the two
of you that you are fairly laid back about departmental closures
in this sort of system.
Professor Diamond: I would not
say we are laid back about the departmental closures, what we
say, very clearly, is we have to be able to attract the right
number of students and the right number of graduates. I would
submit that the whole issue of mathematics is a very, very complex
system. At the beginning we need to make sure there are students
in schools and so mathematics has to be taught properly and taught
in an exciting way that people want to do it at an undergraduate
level. Within the undergraduate arena, many mathematic departments,
in an intra-university funding public system, have never been
able to fund themselves off their own students, the way their
funding has existed is through service teaching; service teaching
to biology or to economics or to somewhere else. If that increasingly
is drawn away, then it becomes very much more difficult for an
individual mathematics department to fund itself and then the
funding looks precarious. We must work to ensure that kind of
opportunity still exists. It is not just a simple matter of saying,
" . . . therefore mathematicians must teach service courses
. . . " because there has to be ownership of the mathematician
to make that exciting because it has to be seen to the social
scientists being taught their mathematics by the mathematics professors
that it is a really exciting and important thing and there is
ownership there. Then at the research council level there is the
question of making priorities and highlighting the need for really
exciting research challenges which will bring mathematic graduates
in and for the mathematic students in schools to see this as exciting.
You will find the research councils in a number of cases are now
moving into schools to try and develop activity and to make it
exciting to young people and to say: "Look, a career in mathematics
research is an exciting thing". When the applications run
out you are likely also to see a number of prioritising activities
from a number of councils, potentially including my own, which
will prioritise some of these areas to try and make a mathematics
career in research broadly defined "extremely exciting".
It is absolutely crucial we do that.
Q255 Dr Harris: Do you think university
science departments are closing or are threatened with closure
by a shortage of student demand to go there? Is there a lack of
applicants?
Professor O'Nions: I think there
are two things: in some cases it is very clearly a lack of applicants,
and just to go to mathematics, Ian is right, the problem is primarily
in schools in mathematics. It is 25% down in the last four or
five years for candidates taking A levels and when you have got
a backdrop of such a reduction and the demand is dropping, clearly
it is going to have a big impact. In other areas it may not be
just demand, there may be other questions about perceived affordability
of teaching that subject within a university, where it is making
decisions about the amount of income it has got and the cost of
teaching particular subjects and its aspirations for research
assessment type exercises and so on. I think there are two drivers,
but in mathematics it is demand which is a huge problem. There
is an enormous drop in the number of people doing A level mathematics.
Q256 Dr Harris: Do you share the
view that the absence of teachers in secondary schools with science
degrees makes it more difficult and has the effect of having less
encouragement on students to do sciences, particularly women teachers
or women students in the physics and chemistry subjects, whereas
if there were as many women going into science degrees as men,
you would not have the shortage that you postulated? Is that a
particular problem in your view?
Professor Sir Keith O'Nions: It
is a problem, I agree.
Professor Diamond: Absolutely
no doubt. I would just say that it is not just in physics and
chemistry but it is also in mathematics and subjects such as economics.
Q257 Dr Harris: What would you say
to the view, if you were again advising people, that graduates
with higher levels of debt are more likely to go into well-paid
jobs than less well-paid public sector jobs, particularly if they
think their career earnings may be reduced because of family commitments,
and therefore they will be paying off debt for longer? Let us
assume these are sensible people who can count and work out the
impact of debt and the impact of higher salaries and paying off
that debt.
Professor Sir Keith O'Nions: I
think I have to give you a completely honest answer and say I
will see what evidence we have got, and what analysis there is.
Professor Diamond: We really need
an evidence base to answer that question.
Q258 Dr Harris: Are you saying it
is your understanding that the system of increasing debt has been
introduced without that evidence on public sector jobs, particularly
in science, being produced?
Professor Sir Keith O'Nions: You
cannot have the evidence within the UK because we have switched
from one regime to another, so you have to go outside the UK and
look at that situation. Once you go out of the UK where students
are accumulating large amounts of lifetime debt, you really have
to go to the United States, comparing people in America, relative
to their income, expectations and lifestyles, and how employees
deal with debt situations. I hope it was looked at carefully by
politicians here in the UK, but it does not necessarily mean that
even the US experience will directly translate into this country.
Q259 Dr Harris: Let us say you are
bright—and this is hypothetical now—
Professor Sir Keith O'Nions: It
is totally hypothetical just for the occasion, I accept!
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