International News

Letter from London Slow death of science Despite the announcement made by Gordon Brown, chancellor of the exchequer, in this year’s March budget, that schools, universities and colleges across the UK will be given an extra £8.5 billion (Rs.68,850 crore) over the next three years, many universities are quietly closing academically heavyweight departments. Universities are discovering that to attract larger numbers of students they have to offer ‘fashionable’ courses at the expense of traditionally perceived dryer academic subjects. This shift towards popular courses makes disturbing reading when linked to departmental closures in academia. High profile controversial closures include chemistry at Kings College, London; East Asian studies, linguistics and European studies at Durham; and sociology, anthropology and philosophy at the University of Wales, Swansea. As university managements are forced to become more efficient in their usage of funds, they have had to become more transparent about how available resources are allocated. Departments, which shared resources in the past, now have to compete with each other, which means that successful departments, or those which ‘earn’ money from high student intakes, are able to spruce themselves up without having to share their good fortune. Thus unviable programmes have to be phased out. Probably the biggest losers in this situation are physics and chemistry departments. Comments Tajender Panesor, policy officer at the Institute of Physics: “There are only 51 universities in Britain offering first degrees in physics at present, which is a decline of over 30 percent since 1994.” She goes on to express a genuine fear that the current funding regime could see this number decline even further, seriously undermining the quality of undergraduate teaching in the few physics departments which manage to survive. There is a similar problem in chemistry. There are currently between 35 and 40 chemistry departments in British universities, but the Royal Society of Chemistry is predicting that at best 20 and at worst only six will remain open for teaching and research at the end of the next decade. The closure of the chemistry department of Kings College, London, has created particular anguish, as it is credited with developing crucial techniques which led to the discovery of DNA. To compensate for such closures, some universities are concentrating on offering a range of less demanding science-based courses. Paradoxically a government advisory body claims that thousands of students are wasting their time and money on “sexy” low-grade science degrees offering minimal employment potential. It accuses universities of shutting chemistry, physics and biology departments in favour of “more fashionable” options such as forensic science. Certainly in this field there are some strange anomalies. London South Bank University for example, is offering forensic science with marketing, media studies or tourism, and the University of Derby offers forensic studies with creative writing. These are obviously unashamed marketing ploys, which are serving to condemn serious scientific subjects to the sidelines, with the result that the country will soon find itself short of the hard science skills it needs. Spain Socialist government’s good start Spanish universities face…