Given yesterday’s announcement of cuts to the Higher Education budget in Wales, and the likely outcome in terms of increased costs to students, this picture of a sign I found the other day at the entrance to Bute Park seems particularly apt…
Archive for the Finance Category
A Sign of the Times
Posted in Education, Finance with tags Higher Education, student discount, Wales on November 18, 2010 by telescoperEngineering a Conflict
Posted in Finance, Politics, Science Politics with tags Colin MacIlwain, Engineering, Particle Physics, Science on October 25, 2010 by telescoperI don’t have time to post much today so I thought I’d just put up a quick item about something that the e-astronomer (aka Andy Lawrence) has already blogged about, and generated a considerable amount of discussion about so I’ll just chip in with my two-penny-worth.
Some time ago I posted an item explaining how, in the run-up to last week’s Comprehensive Spending Review, the Royal Academy of Engineering had argued, in a letter to the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), that government research funding should be
… concentrated on activities from which a contribution to the economy, within the short to medium term, is foreseeable. I recognise that this calls for significant changes in practice but I see no alternative in the next decade. This may mean disinvesting in some areas in order properly to invest in others.
They went on to say that
BIS should also consider the productivity of investment by discipline and then sub-discipline. Once the cost of facilities is taken into account it is evident that ‘Physics and Maths’ receive several times more expenditure per research active academic compared to those in ‘Engineering and Technology’. This ratio becomes significantly more extreme if the comparison is made between particle physics researchers and those in engineering and technology. Much of particle physics work is carried out at CERN and other overseas facilities and therefore makes a lower contribution to the intellectual infrastructure of the UK compared to other disciplines. Additionally, although particle physics research is important it makes only a modest contribution to the most important challenges facing society today, as compared with engineering and technology where almost all the research is directly or indirectly relevant to wealth creation.
I had hoped that this unseemly attack on particle physics would have been seen for what it was and would have faded into the background, but a recent article by Colin Macilwain has brought it back into the spotlight. I quote
UK engineers have started a scrap that will grow uglier as the spending cuts begin.
I should add that MacIlwain isn’t particularly supportive of the engineers’ position, but he does make some interesting remarks on the comparitively low status held by engineers in the United Kingdom compared to other countries, a point alsotaken up on Andy Lawrence’s blog. In my opinion this bare-faced attempt to feather their own nest at the expense of fundamental physics isn’t likely to generate many new admirers. Neither is the fact – and this is a point I’ve tried to make before – that the engineers’ argument simply doesn’t hold any water in the first place.
The point they are trying to make is that research in engineering is more likely to lead to rapid commercial exploitation than research in particle physics. That may be true, but it’s not a good argument for the government to increase the amount of research funding. If engineering and applied science really is “near market” in the way that the RAEng asserts, then it shouldn’t need research grants, but should instead be supported by venture capital or direct investment from industry. The financial acumen likely to be available from such investors will be much for useful for the commercial exploitation of any inventions or discoveries than a government-run research council. To be fair, as MacIlwain’s article explains, a large fraction of engineering research (perhaps 75%) is funded by commerce and industry. Moreover some engineering research is also too speculative for the market to touch and therefore does merits state support. However, that part that needs state support needs it for precisely the same reason that particle physics does, i.e. that its potential is long-term rather than short term. This means that is in the same boat as fundamental physics and shouldn’t keep pretending that it isn’t. If engineering research needs government funding then ipso facto it’s not likely to generate profits in the short term.
I think scientists and engineers would all be better off if they worked together to emphasize the amazingly successful links between fundamental physics and technology, as demonstrated by, e.g., the Large Hadron Collider at CERN and the mutual interdependence of their disciplines.
United we stand, and all that…
The Great Escape? Not yet.
Posted in Finance, Politics, Science Politics with tags astronomy, Particle Physics, RCUK, Science funding, Science is Vital, STFC on October 20, 2010 by telescoperI expected to wake up this morning with the blues all round my bed, about the results of the Comprehensive Spending Review about to be announced today, but news appearing in the Guardian and the BBC websites last night suggested that the UK Science budget may, repeat may, be spared the worst of the cuts.
This news has been greeted with euphoria in the science community, as we were expecting much worse than the settlement suggested by the news. The RCUK budget, it seems, will be fixed in cash terms around £3.5 billion per annum for four years, as will the approximately £1bn distributed for research through HEFCE’s QR mechanism. This translates into a real terms cut that depends on what figure you pick for inflation over this period. The Treasury suggests it will corresponding to a 10% reduction figured that way, but inflation has defied predictions and remained higher than expected over the past three years so things could be different. Also important to note is that this budget (amounting to around £4.6 billion) is to be ring-fenced within RCUK.
So why the apparent change of heart? Well, I don’t know for sure, but I think the Science is Vital campaign played a very big part in this. Huge congratulations are due to Jenny Rohn and the rest of the team for doing such a fantastic job. The Guardian makes this clear, stating that science is usually a non-issue for the Treasury, but this time it was
high on the political radar because strong representations have been made by the scientific community about what they have described as “long term and irreversible” damage to the UK economy if there are deep cuts to research funding.
That means everyone who wrote to their MP or lobbied or went on the demo really did make a difference. Give yourselves a collective pat on the back!
BUT (and it’s a very big BUT) we’re by no means out of the woods yet, at least not those of us who work in astronomy and particle physics. As the BBC article makes clear, the level cash settlement for RCUK comes with an instruction that “wealth creation” be prioritised. The budget for RCUK covers all the research councils, who will now have to make their pitch to RCUK for a share of the pie. It’s unlikely that it will be flat cash for everyone. There will be winners and losers, and there’s no prize for guessing who the likely losers are.
The performance of the STFC Executive during the last CSR should also be born in mind. STFC did very poorly then at a time when the overall funding allocation for science was relatively generous, and precipitated a financial crisis that STFC’s management still hasn’t properly come to grips with. The track-record doesn’t inspire me with confidence. Moreover, at a town meeting in London in December 2007 at which the Chief Executive of STFC presented a so-called delivery plan to deal with the crisis he led his organisation into, he confidently predicted a similarly poor settlement in the next CSR. Talk about a self-fulfilling prophecy. Let’s hope they get their act together better this time.
Taking all this together it remains by no means improbable that the STFC budget could be squeezed until the pips squeak in order to liberate funds to spend elsewhere within RCUK on things that look more likely to generate profits quickly. The nightmare scenario I mentioned a few days ago is still on the cards.
As we all know, STFC’s budget is dominated by large fixed items so its science programme is especially vulnerable. As the BBC puts it
So any cut in [STFC’s] budget will be greatly magnified and it is expected that it will have to withdraw from a major programme. Alternatively, it would have to cutback or close one of its research institutes.
We could have to wait until December to find out the STFC budget, so the anxiety is by no means over. However, the ring-fencing of RCUK’s budget within BIS may bring that forward a bit as it would appear to suggest one level of negotations could be skipped. We might learn our fate sooner than we thought.
Overall, this is a good result in the circumstances. Although it’s a sad state of affairs when a >10% real terms cut is presented as a success, it’s far less bad than many of us had expected. But I think STFC science remains in grave danger. It’s not an escape, just a stay of execution.
But there is one important lesson to be learned from this. When the STFC crisis broke three years ago, reaction amongst scientists was muted. Fearful of rocking the boat, we sat on our hands as the crisis worsened. I hope that the success of the Science is Vital campaign has convinced you that keeping quiet and not making a fuss is exactly the wrong thing to do.
If only we’d been braver three years ago.
Astronomy Cuts Rumour Mill
Posted in Finance, Politics, Science Politics with tags BIS, cuts, funding, RCUK, STFC on October 18, 2010 by telescoperFollowing on from my recent post of the STFC budget, and the comments thereon, I thought it might be useful to make the discussion a bit more prominent as the scale of the cuts is revealed this week and people feel the consequent need to work off nervous energy.
To get things started I’ve taken the liberty of paraphrasing some of Paul Crowther‘s comments (in italics):
\begin{paraphrase}
More or less 20% of the total STFC budget shifts across to UKSA from April 2011. This means the STFC budget will reduce from around £570m to around £455m even if the settlement is flat-cash. Grants for space science exploitation remain the responsibility of STFC even after the transfer of the other space activity to UKSA.
George Osborne has announced that ‘infrastructure’ cash from LFCF (Capital Fund) will go towards an upgrade of the Diamond light source. This is a different pot of money from individual Research Councils, but still part of the overall RCUK budget. The Drayson plan for STFC was always to separate Harwell operations (Diamond, ISIS, CLF) from the rest of STFC programmes, so support for Diamond upgrade is likely to come with operations cash too.
Putting these two items together, the STFC allocation will shrink and some of the remaining cash is going to be ring-fenced for Diamond operations. Assuming that the overall RCUK budget falls by 20% in near-cash terms and 50% in capital on Wednesday 20th and STFC not do worse than “average” across the RCUK portfolio, the cash+capital for the rest of the non-UKSA programme at STFC would fall by 25% or so, i.e. approx £100 million pounds less to spend per annum than at present.
In practice this might mean..
…Mothballing ISIS + CLF (£35m) AND withdrawing from ESO (£30m) AND cancelling all PP grants (£24m) AND stopping all accelerator R& D (£8m)…
… or some other equally hideous combination of items in the spreadsheet.
\end{paraphrase}
In other words this really would be “game over” for large parts of STFC science. Even if the cuts are at the level of 15%, which is apparently what the word on the street is saying, then there are still going to be extremely hard choices.
One nightmare possibility is that STFC not only cuts back on new research grants – as it has already done by approximately 40% over the past three years – but actually decides to claw back grants it has already issued. If this happens at the same time as the Treasury slashes HEFCE’s support for research through the QR element then many physics departments will go under very quickly, as they will no longer be even remotely viable financially.
We’re on the brink…
Science is Vital – the Video
Posted in Finance, Politics, Science Politics with tags Science is Vital on October 18, 2010 by telescoperA comment on my earlier post about the Science is Vital rally on 9th October included this video of the occasion. Actually it’s more a series of stills than a proper video, but if you look very closely around 39 seconds in you’ll see me lurking among the ill-disciplined rabble well-behaved demonstrators seeking to overthrow the state argue the case for science and bring about the collapse of global capitalism and try to dissuade the Treasury from huge cuts to the budget for research.
STFC Budget 2010-11
Posted in Finance, Science Politics with tags astronomy, Particle Physics, STFC on October 14, 2010 by telescoperJust a quick post to point out that the Science and Technology Facilities Council have released a reasonably complete breakdown of their current budget. I’m sure many readers working in astronomy and particle physics will find it interesting reading, though others will probably find it incredibly boring.
Here it is, for easy reference, in bits, generated by a clumsy cut-and-paste-technique wholly unbefitting the hi-tech nature of STFC, starting with the PPAN Programme:
and now the rest
For those of you not up with the accounting lingo, “near cash” means assets investments and other things that could in principle be exchanged for cash in a relatively short period of time.
These are, of course, the figures before the impending cuts take place….
There’s a much more legible version of the whole thing here.
The Browne Stuff
Posted in Education, Finance, Politics with tags Browne Report, Higher Education, Universities on October 13, 2010 by telescoperI’m basically in purdah this week, shuttling to and fro between Cardiff and Swindon on the business of the STFC Astronomy Grants Panel. However, I couldn’t resist a brief early morning post about yesterday’s news about the report on higher education funding by Lord Browne. I haven’t had time to read the report in full, so won’t comment in detail on it, but a few things did strike me from what I’ve picked up from the media. Perhaps others will add their views through the comments box.
- For a start it’s quite amusing how far wide of the mark most of the rumour-mongering about the report’s recommendations has been. In fact the proposals are far more radical than had been touted.
- The suggestion of lifting the cap on fees entirely, and allowing universities to decide how much to charge for tuition, will delight the so-called “elite” universities, but will alarm those (like me) who worry about the impact on students from poorer backgrounds. Most difficult, however, as far as I’m concerned will be the impact on middle-grade universities who won’t know where to pitch themselves in the free market that such a move would create. We know that Oxbridge will be able to get away with charging pretty much whatever they like, and many of the former polytechnics will clearly go for the budget end of the market, but in between there will be tricky decisions to make.
- The increased fee is to be offset by a cut of a whopping 80% (from £3.5bn to £0.8bn) in the teaching grant to English universities. A cut of this scale may well mean that some courses do not receive any direct contribution from the taxpayer at all (the so-called “unit of resouce”). If this goes ahead it will undoubtedly lead to course closures across the country. Although I would oppose a blanket cut of this scale, I’m not against the idea of withdrawing support from Mickey Mouse courses and concentrating it on important subjects.
- It seems likely, and indeed there are already signs, that full implementation of the Browne proposals will be politically difficult for the ConDem coalition. In fact, unless some of the recommendations are diluted, this may well lead to a full-scale revolt. We’ll have to wait and see.
- Vince Cable has endorsed the report, despite his own party’s previous opposition to raising tuition fees. Any resisual respect I had for him is going down the plughole very rapidly indeed.
- Finally, I’ll just point out that, even if they are fully implemented, the draconian cuts to English higher education funding are not necessarily going to be replicated here in Wales (or in Scotland or Northern Ireland). The Welsh Assembly has issued a statement on the Browne report, but clearly doesn’t know what to do about it. If they make good decisions now, Welsh universities could prosper by bucking the English trend, but if they get it wrong….
Anyway, that’s all for this am. Got a train to catch!
Number Crunching
Posted in Finance, Politics, Science Politics with tags banks, Science funding, Science is Vital on October 6, 2010 by telescoperOnly time for a (very) brief post this evening, as I’ve been in London all day and got back much later than expected.
In this morning’s Guardian there was a story about how the UK’s banks intend to pay out a whopping £7bn in bonuses this year. Banks. Remember them? They’re the organisations whose behaviour almost brought this country’s economy to its knees a few years ago and needed to be baled out by the taxpayer, at enormous cost to the public purse.
Meanwhile, the Science is Vital campaign is gearing up for Saturday’s rally. An article over on cosmic variance has raised the profile of this increasingly vocal campaign to stave off cuts which threaten to destroy Britain’s position as a leading scientific nation. The petition has now been signed by over 17,000 people (including the winners of this year’s Nobel Prize for Physics, announced yesterday).
It’s worth emphasizing the numbers behind this story too. The annual UK science budget, before the next round of cuts, stands at £3.2billion. That’s everything – particle physics, astronomy, chemistry, biosciences, and countless other things.
I need hardly point out the irony. The amount we’re waging an increasingly desperate fight to protect is less than half the amount to be spent on yachts and fancy cars by the people who got us into this mess in the first place. Some of us hoped the financial sector would show some contrition after the disaster of 2007. Fat chance! Their rescue by the taxpayer has probably just convinced them that however they behave they can always rely on Joe Public to get them out of trouble. It seems they’ve reverted to type.
So let’s have no more of the specious arguments about having to cut science in order to avoid having to cut, say, the National Health Service. Science isn’t as expensive as some people would have us believe, and it’s not a luxury either. It’s vital to our economic and cultural well-being. Each pound spend on science is worth a lot more to this country than two disappearing into a banker’s offshore tax haven.
In any case the government should just tax the greedy bankers’ bonus payments and use the money to increase the science budget. Better still, put pressure on the banks to themselves invest in science, alongside other areas of innovation, which we know will generate healthy profits for those brave enough to take a calculated risk, rather than going back to the old game of playing around with dodgy property-based financial speculations, which have a good chance of taking us down the plughole for good.
Stay of Execution
Posted in Education, Finance, Politics, Science Politics with tags George Osborne, June Budget, Research Funding, Science, STFC on June 22, 2010 by telescoperAnother beautiful summer’s day here in Cardiff just happened to be the day when the new ConDem government unleashed its much-feared budget. I suppose we were all expecting some combination of tax rises and spending cuts but nodody I know had managed to predict the details. A big rise in VAT (to 20%) is the headline figure most of the newspapers seem to be running with, but the other side is the one that caught my eye; average cuts of 25% in “unprotected” Whitehall departments. That means basically everything outside Health and Education, and “Education” doesn’t include Higher Education which falls within the remit of the Department of Business Innovation and Skills. Universities (in England; Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland run their own budgets for HE) and the Research Councils are therefore bracing themselves for cuts of 25% or even more; if some departments are cut less than this average, then some will be cut more…
For informed comment, see here and here.
However, the details of how these cuts will be implemented – and, of particular relevance to me, how much the Science and Technology Facilities Council will be chopped – will have to wait until the Comprehensive Spending Review to be announced in October 2010. No doubt the STFC Executive will be using all their political skills and powers of persuasion to argue for a positive settlement. Like they did last time. In other words, we’re doomed.
Incidentally, you can hear Lord Rees’ scathing comments about the inept management of STFC here, although to so involves shaking hands with the devil that is iTunes.
There’s also a two-year freeze on public sector salaries – again, not entirely unexpected – but obviously that will only apply to those who keep their jobs after the departmental budgets are cut by a quarter.
Anyway, no point in griping. We all knew this was coming. The big question now is whether the increases in unemployment and tax rises will stop our feeble economic recovery in its tracks, and how badly the cuts in investment will jeoparside future growth. I’m not sufficiently knowledgeable about economics to comment sensibly on this.
Coincidentally today was also the day that STFC Council met here in Cardiff. Of course they did so behind closed doors, but they also had a quick tour of the buildings and a briefing by our Head of School, Swiss Tony Walter Gear. I’m told one of the Council members asked “Excuse me, but what is Planck?”. Apparently the question was posed by one of the non-scientists on STFC Council. So that’s alright then.
Still, there’s always the elimination of France from the World Cup to gladden the heart of an Englishman. Like STFC, the England football team will learn its fate soon eough …
The Graveyard of Ambition?
Posted in Education, Finance, Politics, Science Politics with tags HEFCW, Leighton Andrews AM, Research Assessment Exercise, Research Excellence Framework, Wales, Welsh Assembly Government on May 23, 2010 by telescoperThe news today is full of speculation about the nature and extent of impending public spending cuts expected to be announced in the Queen’s Speech next Tuesday. Among the more specific figures being bandied about is a £700 million cut to the budget Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) which encompasses both scientific research and the university sector. It’s impossibly to say precisely where the axe will fall, but it’s very likely that university-based science groups in England will face a double-whammy, losing income both from HEFCE and from the Research Councils. The prospect looks particular dire for Physics & Astronomy, which rely for their research grants on the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) which savagely cut back science research even before the credit crunch arrived. If STFC gets cut any further then the result will be even worse carnage un universities than we’ve experienced over the last year or two, especially since it looks like there will be no changes in its Executive.
Here in Wales the situation is even more complicated, as is explained in a long article in this week’s Times Higher. Cuts to the Research Councils will, of course, affect university research groups in the Principality as their remit covers the whole of the United Kingdom. However, responsibility for Higher Education in Wales is devolved to the Welsh Assembly Government. This means that any cuts to the University budget announced next week will not apply here (nor indeed in Scotland or Northern Ireland).
However, as I’ve blogged about before, it’s not obvious that this is good news for fundamental science in Wales. The Welsh Assembly Government’s blueprint for the shape of Higher Education in Wales, For Our Future, signals what could be dramatic changes in the way university funding is allocated here. There’s a lot of nervousness about how things will pan out.
Currently, most university funding in Wales comes through HEFCW in the form of recurrent grants. However the WAG has recently set up a Strategic Implementation Fund which in future supply 80% of all university funding. The new(ish) Minister responsible for Higher Education, Leighton Andrews (who will be giving a public lecture in Cardiff about the changes next week) seems to be determined to take control of the sector. It’s good to have a Minister who shows some interest in Higher Education, but I’m wary of politicians with Big Ideas.
We’ll have to wait and see what happens over the next year or so, but I think there’s an opportunity for Wales to do something truly radical and break away from systems that simply copy those in place in England with a much lower level of resource. Given that HEFCW has already been told how 80% of its funding should be administered, why bother with HEFCW at all? Scrapping this quango will remove a buffer between the universities and the WAG, which might be a dangerous thing to do, but will also save money that could be spent on higher education rather than bureaucracy. And while we’re at it, why doesn’t the WAG take Welsh universities out of the Research Excellence Framework? In the new era why should Welsh universities be judged according to English priorities?
On the teaching side, the WAG wants to see more flexible study options, more part-time degrees (including PhDs), more lifelong learning, and so on. I think that’s a reasonable thing to aim for given the particular socio-economic circumstances that pertain in Wales, but I can’t really see scope for significant numbers of part-time degrees in physics, especially at the doctoral level.
A crucial issue that has to be addressed is the proliferation of small universities in Wales. England has a population of 49.1 million, and has 91 universities (a number that many consider to be way too high in any case). The population of Wales is just 2.98 million but has 12 universities which is about twice as many per capita as in England. I for one think this situation is unsustainable, but I’m not sure to what extent mergers would be politically acceptable.
The WAG also wants to focus funding on “priority areas” that it perceives to be important to future development of industry in Wales, including health and biosciences, the digital economy, low-carbon technologies, and advanced engineering and manufacturing. Fair enough, I say, as long as “focus on” doesn’t mean “scrap everything else but”. The big worry for me is that research doesn’t feature very strongly at all in the WAG’s document, and it isn’t in good shape in any case. According to the last Research Assessment Exercise (RAE), only around 14% of Welsh research is of world-leading quality and most of that (90%) is concentrated in just four institutions (Aberystwyth, Bangor, Cardiff and Swansea).
Physics in Wales did particularly poorly in the RAE and in any case only involves three universities, Bangor having closed its Physics department many years ago. Indeed the RAE panel went out of its way to make unfavourable comments about the lack of coordination in Welsh physics – comments, I might add, that went entirely beyond the panel’s remit and should have attracted censure. Physics is also an expensive subject so if we are to do better in future we need additional investment. Cardiff University is doing its best bring this about, but I think we should explore closer ties with Swansea and explicit encouragement from the WAG.
STEM areas are woefully under-represented in Wales. Some think the WAG should seize the chance to boost this area of activity, but others think it’s already too late. According to the Times Higher,
Julie Lydon, vice-chancellor of the University of Glamorgan and the first female head of a university in Wales, says expertise in STEM will have to be developed in “distinct areas”. Given its small size, Wales must be careful to set itself realistic aims, she says.
The country faces a complex challenge, Lydon adds. “We don’t have anywhere near the range and extent of research (that we should) for our size. We’ve got to move it up a gear, and we’ve got to raise aspirations. We’ll do that in niche areas, and we’ll do that by partnership, not on our own.
“We haven’t the scope and scale; Wales isn’t a large enough sector to be able to do that across the board, but it’s an agenda that is slightly wider than the narrow view of STEM.”
A focus on STEM would neglect some areas in which Wales is strong, Lydon says. Thanks to investment from major employers such the BBC, disciplines such as media are growth areas and critical to the economy, but they are not strictly defined as STEM subjects.
No, media studies isn’t a STEM subject. Nor do I think Wales can continue to rely on its economy being propped up by public bodies such as the BBC. The expected round of wider public spending cuts I mentioned at the start of this piece will effectively scupper that argument and I’m sure privatisation of the BBC is on the new government’s agenda anyway. The future requires more ambition than this kind of thinking exemplifies. Sadly, however, ambition doesn’t seem to be something that the Welsh are particularly good at. Dylan Thomas’s phrase “The Graveyard of Ambition” was specifically aimed at his home town of Swansea, but it does sum up an attitude you can find throughout the country: a resolute determination to be mediocre.
Wales is indeed a small country. So is Scotland (population about 5 million), but the Scots have for a long time placed a much higher premium on science and university education generally than the Welsh (and even the English) and they have a thriving university sector that’s the envy of other nations (including England). I think it’s time for a change of mentality.
In the Dark 