Examination of Witnesses (Questions 60-79)
PROFESSOR ALASDAIR
SMITH, DR
GERRY LAWLESS
AND MR
STEVE EGAN
27 MARCH 2006
Q60 Dr Harris: One chemistry department
is never going to be a gross market failure, is it?
Mr Egan: I agree with you and
that is the point that I was about to make. Gross can sound like
acute—ie, a chemistry department closing—and that
is the only time we get involved. That is not the case. What we
have established here, prompted by this Committee and others as
well as by the analysis we have carried out, is that there is
a problem with chemistry. There was a 20% decline in student numbers
and that needed attention and intervention. That is the kind of
gross problem that I would refer to.
Q61 Dr Harris: You say you have a
role as a broker to facilitate the provision of strategically
important and vulnerable subjects. In fact, you say "only
as a broker". How would you judge failure in that role?
Mr Egan: We would judge failure
if the trends that we see in terms of the amount of graduates
coming out of the system nationally rather than from the individual
institution, or within a system within a region, were not to respond
to the interventions that we made. In other words, if there was
a continued decline in chemistry graduates or stem graduates,
we would say that part of that responsibility must rest with us.
That is not all down to us. That is our objective, to put right
some of the problems we see at the moment in the stem subjects.
Q62 Dr Harris: You must recognise
there is a problem therefore and that the closure of another department
which is not big enough to be a gross market failure in itself
is, three or four years later, going to have an impact on the
metric you have chosen as your measure of failure. I am wondering
whether your judgment of criteria for failure and your very high
threshold for doing anything substantive other than informing
the decline, if you like, with information is a mismatch.
Mr Egan: It is true that a closure
of a department will reduce the supply of chemistry graduates
as it did in Exeter. We can take mitigating actions to deal with
that, as we did in Exeter, to ensure that the provision on the
teaching side is maintained. We can work with the research Councils
as we are doing to make sure that the provision on the research
side is maintained. Every time a chemistry department is closed
that makes it more difficult for us. By working at the demand
side, we are effecting basic economics that will influence institutions'
decision making as to whether or not to close the department.
We are expecting those initiatives to come through as well.
Q63 Dr Harris: Do you know of any
other closures in the pipeline?
Mr Egan: No.
Q64 Dr Harris: Are you planning to
get involved in the Dean of Life Sciences review?
Mr Egan: No.
Q65 Dr Harris: You do not see yourself
as having a role to play in this particular decision?
Mr Egan: The decision as to whether
to close the department, to continue the department or to follow
any of the other options is a matter for the institution itself.
We are interested in ensuring that, whatever path it does follow,
the interests of the students are maintained and that whatever
action we need to take to ensure that the totality of provision
of chemistry, particularly in the south east but also nationally,
is maintained both in teaching and research.
Q66 Chairman: The closure of Exeter,
Kings, Queen Mary's and Swansea and now Sussex does not come into
your gross category in terms of four or five chemistry departments?
Mr Egan: I am not saying that
that is not—
Q67 Chairman: I just wonder at what
point you will become seriously concerned about chemistry in the
UK.
Mr Egan: We are seriously concerned
now, which is why we are taking the actions that we are taking.
The individual institutions are autonomous bodies that have the
right to decide for themselves what subjects they provide and
whether or not to continue, expand or close any of those subjects.
Q68 Dr Turner: If an institution
asked you for help, in the case of Sussex—I have no idea
what the university asked you for a week before the proposed decision
was announced—to keep a department going through a difficult
time, what would you do and what were you asked? What do you offer
to do?
Mr Egan: We would have a discussion
with the institution and find out exactly what that meant and
what help we may or may not be able to provide.
Q69 Dr Turner: What sort of help
can you provide? I am finding it very difficult to pin you down,
if you do not mind me saying so.
Mr Egan: The help we could provide
is to say, "If you want to work in collaboration with another
institution to ensure that you have a viable chemistry department"
we may be able to broker that kind of arrangement.
Q70 Chairman: They do not need you
for that. They can do that themselves. Loads of departments work
together internationally.
Mr Egan: That is true.
Q71 Dr Iddon: Can I ask if you are
aware of this report from the Royal Society of Chemistry which
is now in the public domain? It has examined eight chemistry departments
across Britain from a leading international five star department
down to the lower RAE ratings. I do not want to précis
this report but I will. What this report tells me is that, taking
all the funding mechanisms that are in place to fund chemistry
departments, particularly the dual funding mechanism, there probably
is not a single chemistry department in Britain, certainly of
these eight according to this report, that can paint a black line
instead of a red line. In other words, sciences—it is not
just chemistry in my opinion—and engineering with the very
expensive workshops and laboratory facilities are not properly
funded by the government through the dual support mechanisms.
Are you aware of this report?
Mr Egan: Yes, I have seen that
report. The teaching provision within institutions across a number
of subjects is under-funded, using full economic costing. There
is an issue which the government has addressed through substantial
investments on the research side, making research sustainable
and there have been many improvements there. For instance, the
amount of money that has gone into chemistry on research since
2002 has gone from 39 million to 51 million, a substantial increase.
There have been increases in the unit of funding, the absolute
amounts that we have provided for chemistry, and of course there
are increases due to the introduction of tuition fees along the
way. We will be introducing, with the agreement of the sector
now, the trac methodology to understand better the full economic
costs, not just of chemistry but of all subjects, and that will
give us all a much clearer view of what amount of funding is required
in order to ensure that the individual subjects are sustainable
into the future because, of course, people can make do and mend
from one year to another but that will be at the expense of infrastructure.
Dr Iddon: Full economic costing is okay
and I fully support the exercise you have gone through. It has
highlighted the under-funding of science and engineering in Britain,
but the problem is that if we are to exert full economic funding
on industry they are probably going to go to Germany or any other
country for the research because they are not prepared to provide
the full economic funding, at least in the case of small and medium
enterprises. They cannot provide the full economic funding and
there lies a major difficulty for science and engineering in Britain,
in my opinion.
Q72 Chairman: Professor Smith and
Dr Lawless, could you comment as well?
Professor Smith: On the specific
issue of full economic costing of commercial research?
Dr Iddon: This reveals a major problem
now for British science and engineering.
Q73 Chairman: In higher education.
Professor Smith: There is a major
problem of the under-funding of teaching and research across the
whole spectrum of higher education. On the specific issue of the
full economic costing of commercial research contracts, yes, it
is an issue but it is not the policy under full economic costing
that every commercial contract has to be priced at full economic
costing. What universities are expected to do is to understand
what the full economic costs are and then to do business in the
market place in the light of knowledge of the full economic costs.
That means that a university would be unwise to undertake a vast
amount of commercial contract work at less than full economic
costing because then one is making a loss, but there may be strategic
relationships or contract work that has academic spin-off effects
or other situations where a university makes a decision that the
market will not bear a price that covers full economic cost but
it is nevertheless right for that business to go ahead.
Q74 Dr Turner: I would like to ask
Alasdair and Gerry for their view on the thought that, while we
agree it is clear that financial problems motivated these proposals,
are these financial problems at the university specific to chemistry
or are they the result of haemorrhaging of funds in other directions
that give rise to red line problems in universities' accounts?
Can you throw any light on that aspect?
Professor Smith: The proposals
for chemistry are not driven by the overall financial position
of the university. The overall financial position of the university
is difficult at the moment. There is no secret about that, but
we are planning to make, notwithstanding the financial constraints,
a substantial investment in building up academic excellence in
both research and teaching across a number of areas of the University's
provision. The judgments about which areas to invest in are driven
by academic judgments of which areas have the strongest potential
to grow their strength in research and teaching. These options
about chemistry are not driven by considerations of the overall
financial position of the institution; they are driven by a sensible
strategic policy of investing selectively in the strength.
Q75 Dr Harris: There is a question
about the financial situation of chemistry at Sussex. Is it the
case, as has been said, that the QR funding, for example, going
to chemistry has been used effectively to subsidise other parts
of the University, including very closely related to chemistry
perhaps, which means that has put chemistry at a disadvantage
compared to what they would otherwise have had it had the full
share of the QR funding under the RAE that it had attracted? Dr
Lawless?
Dr Lawless: Yes, that is certainly
the case. This is not a financially driven proposal. Of the five
departments of life science, we have one of the smallest deficits,
circa 80K. The others deficits range from 120K to 300K. It is
not a financially driven proposal. Alasdair is 100% correct.
Q76 Dr Iddon: Is your department
getting all the QR funding that it would get as a five rated department
from the RAE? Yes or no?
Dr Lawless: Not at the moment.
Q77 Dr Iddon: Do you know how much
you are missing of that?
Dr Lawless: Approximately 700K.
Q78 Dr Turner: That is quite a large
slice. That would pay for a lot of faculty.
Dr Lawless: Indeed.
Q79 Dr Harris: You do not think it
would make a difference to the proposal because you are saying
it is not a financially driven proposal.
Dr Lawless: Not at all.
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