Memorandum submitted by Durham University
(FC 87)
DURHAM UNIVERSITY
INPUT TO
1994 GROUP RESPONSE
We append below responses to the specific questions.
We should declare a strong interest in STFC funding, holding a
10-year (renewable after five) programme grant for the Institute
for Particle Physics Phenomenology, and large grants in the Institute
for Cosmological Computing and in Observational Astronomy.
Tom McLeish
PVC Research
Durham University
The process for deciding where to make cuts in
SET spending
This question needs to be divorced from political
and organisational issues within RCUK. A high-level review should
ask:
— What are those fields within SET of high
future promise in both fundamental breakthroughs in understanding
and technological promise, that are non-incremental in nature?
— In which of those fields is the UK internationally
leading or potentially internationally leading?
— Prioritise the intersection of those
two classes of fields.
What evidence there is on the feasibility or effectiveness
of estimating the economic impact of research, both from a historical
perspective (for QR funding) and looking to the future (for Research
Council grants)
There have been recent reports by HEFCE on the
effect of QR funding, and by EPSRC on the effectiveness and economic
return of grant funding. Both proceeded by a sample of case studies
carefully researched. In the EPSRC case, the connectivity of partnerships
in industry and academic projects in the polymer science sector
was followed, and used to identify products and improvements over
a 10 year interval. A 10-fold return on investment for the UK
economy was found in that case. This methodology (one could call
it "phylogenetic tracking") could be used more widespread.
The differential effect of cuts on demand-led
and research institutions
It is essential to recognise the plurality of
the higher education sector in the UK, and to recognise equally
that the performance of the UK's research-intensive universities
has delivered for the nation the most efficient producer of research
on the planet. Per £, the UK produces more citations, so
changes the way more people and institutions think and behave,
and creates more innovation, than anywhere else, including the
US. This is a huge national advantage but is very fragile. This
sector is very exposed to national research funding and teaching
funding for its financial viability.
The implications and effects of the announced
STFC budget cuts
There are three classes of effect for these
cuts:
(1) impact on physics departments;
(2) impact on specific fields; and
(3) impact on UK science and brain drain.
1. It is clear that the amount of money
being distributed to physics departments as part of the domestic
programme is being reduced. The areas covered by PPAN—Particle
Physics, Astronomy and Nuclear Physics—are being reduced
by about £30 million per year. That is money that would be
going to physics departments. We expect that some physics departments
may be forced to close.
2. The size of the financial problem has
a number of implications for the long term health of the fields.
There is a delicate balancing act between exploitation of the
current facilities/experiments and R&D for future projects.
In particle physics, the need to exploit the investment at the
LHC is tensioned against the need to keep the expertise for future
projects like the Linear Collider. Given STFC's decision to fund
only (at reduced levels) the PPAN alpha5-ranked, and most of the
alpha4-ranked, projects there is concern about the resulting overall
balance and options for the long-term future of the UK particle
physics programme.
The impact on astronomy is very severe. Astronomy
grants are reviewed every year and the results of last year's
round are now being finalised. The effective funding cut this
round is 20% which, added to the 25% cut suffered in the previous
two years, makes a 45% cut in total. Should similar cuts be repeated
over the next two years, we will reach a point at which it arguably
no longer makes any sense to have an astronomy programme at all
in the UK. Yet this is a field that one would certainly seek to
maintain under the criteria proposed by the first question above.
3. Already two of the particle physics staff
in Durham have left the UK- Professor Weiglein and Dr Moortgat-Pick.
The main reason for coming to the UK was the support for Particle
Physics through PPARC, and the UK contribution to the International
Linear Collider. The main driver behind them leaving was the dramatic
change in the UK position on the Linear Collider as described
in the STFC delivery plan from 2007.
Despite the best attempts of the community to
properly plan for the long term science facilities needed to explore
the fundamental nature of the Universe, the STFC era has been
an unmitigated disaster. Over the past decade, the UK has recruited
from the best available international talent, and as opportunities
and funding in the UK dries up, the very best will return to their
own countries—who ironically are increasing support for
education and science.
The scope of the STFC review announced on 16 December
and currently underway
STFC, as it stands must be restructured. The
chief executive should be removed.
There are four main problems:
(1) year-to-year changes in international subscriptions
beyond the control of the UK;
(2) there is a separation between the funding
of national facilities and the RC funding the users;
(3) there is a major conflict of interest between
an organisation which runs its own national facilities and subscribes
to international ones; and
(4) no functional forum exists in which a national
strategy for investment in facilities with appropriate representation
for the major stake-holders can be formulated.
To solve (1) and (2), there should be an alignment
of the budgets used to support a particular area: the RC with
the predominant use of an international subscription takes responsibility
for this and the volume part of the subscription is transferred
into their budget. Future volume changes in the international
subscriptions should come out of the research programme of that
RC, but everything else, which includes currency fluctuations
and the inflation compensation built into the international agreements
are dealt with centrally. In year, the non-volume changes for
each subscription are compensated centrally at the highest possible
level, preferably above RCUK. This proposal follows the suggestion
of section 8.9 of the Wakeham review.
To solve (3) and (4) we should develop a national
laboratory on multiple sites with the director reporting to a
stakeholder Board- to support Diamond, ISIS, etc. It would provide
large-scale engineering and computing facilities for both public
and private sectors. Subscriptions from RCs are set by the Board
on an annual basis in a rolling process with a three-year horizon.
The peer review processes of the contracting research council
to allocate this time are unchanged. A properly constituted National
Laboratory would naturally take its place alongside other national
laboratories overseas providing reciprocal free access to facilities.
The operation and definition of the science budget
ring-fence, and consideration of whether there should be a similar
ring-fence for the Higher Education Funding Council for England
research budget and departmental research budgets
There is a problem with "ring fencing"
as a policy—as the cuts in higher education currently under
consideration amply show. It allows cheap access to "high
moral ground" in the media, while abdicating responsibility
from a difficult but necessary balancing of priorities. The result
is that non-"ring fenced" areas receive disproportionate
cuts that follow no strategic thinking. Setting research budgets
should be done according to the national value placed on their
outputs and consequences, and tensioned properly against other
priorities.
In an economy such as the UK's where future
manufacturing is an absolute necessity to maintain our balance
of payments, yet where this manufacturing base will have to be
build on high-added value technology in emerging areas, research
is clearly a priority in both public and private sectors. This
is especially so in the medium to long term, so it is essential
that strategic decisions on research support are not set by measures
and mechanisms constrained by the short term.
Whether the Government is achieving the objectives
it set out in the "Science and innovation investment framework
2004-2014: next steps", including, for example, making progress
on the supply of high quality science, technology, engineering
and mathematics (STEM) graduates to achieve its overall ambitions
for UK science and innovation
There is some evidence that able young people
are being attracted back into STEM subjects at university and
from thence into teaching, but there are many obstacles still
to overcome. In particular the core numerate science of physics
is irreplaceable in the school context if we are to meet the demand
of excellence in teaching in the future. The sub-disciplines of
astronomy and particle physics regularly appear at the top of
the list of attractions to young people considering the subject.
The repeated battering received by these subjects under the STFC
era of support has damaged this goal, and the current cuts threaten
to damage it further.
Whether the extra student support, which the Government
announced on 20 July 2009 for 10,000 higher education places,
delivered students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics
courses
The announcement of the extra support came too
late in the admissions cycle to have any influence on recruitment
to these subjects. We had already received all our applications
and made all our offers well before this point so the extra support
had no impact on our planning. The additional support provided
allowed us to accept a small number of students in excess of our
planned numbers without incurring a fine for over-recruitment,
where those students had in any case met the conditions of their
offer.
The effect of HEFCE cuts on the "unit of
funding" for STEM students
There is a threat to STEM students arising from
cuts in HEFCE funding for teaching. If the overall teaching grant
starts to fall, there are two ways universities can protect the
unit of resource per student. One is to simply reduce the number
of home/EU students, which (within the +/-5% tolerance band) increases
the unit of resource. Reducing numbers in lab-based subjects has
a greater impact than reducing numbers in classroom based subjects.
The other is to move students out of high cost (lab-based) science
subjects and into lower cost classroom-based subjects. In this
scenario, the institutional income and therefore the average unit
of resource remains the same but the students are much cheaper
to teach.
Furthermore, to compensate for reductions in
HEFCE funding universities are also looking to increase international
student numbers. The only way to do this economically in many
HEIs who are already "full" is to displace home/EU students.
Clearly reducing home/EU numbers in high cost subjects like STEM
and replacing them with high fee paying students in the humanities
where the "net surplus" is greatest, makes good financial
sense in straitened financial times.
So even if the unit of resource for STEM subjects
were to be nominally protected in some way, if there is an overall
drop in teaching funding there will remain an incentive for universities
to reduce the number of students being taught in STEM/lab-based
subjects because of the way the overall funding model works.
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