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The Dissolution of the Assembly

Posted in Education, Finance, Politics with tags Higher Education, Leighton Andrews, Universities, Welsh Assembly Government on March 27, 2011 by telescoper

Yesterday’s mail included a polling card for the forthcoming elections to the Welsh Assembly. Coincidentally, I found out this morning that the Welsh Assembly will be dissolved on 31st March, to be re-convened on or after 5th May when the elections are finished.

Until Thursday the Welsh Assembly Government comprises a coalition of New Labour and Plaid Cymru and, although I don’t know enough about Welsh politics to predict what’s going to happen with any real confidence, it seems reasonably likely that not much will change. I can’t see the Tories or LibDems making any gains, at any rate.

I’m not sure of the extent to which Higher Education will be important in the forthcoming election campaign. It sure be, of course, as the relevant issues are those over which the Assembly has direct responsibility, education being one. The WAG’s hands are tied to a large extent by the funding it receives from Westminster, and it also has many other calls on its purse, but I do hope the new WAG, whatever its complexion is, will do the right thing by Welsh universities when it re-forms in May.

I have to admit, though, that I’m very worried for the future. As I predicted when the new funding arrangements for English universities were announced, the vast majority – and certainly all the research intensive ones – will be charging the full £9K fee level from 2012. That means the current WAG’s commitment to pay fees for Welsh-domiciled students wanting to study in England will be much more expensive than the WAG’s estimates, which were based on an average fee level of £7.5K. English students wanting to study in Wales will have to pay whatever fee Welsh universities charge, which isn’t known yet.

Currently about 25,000 English students study in Wales, compared with the 16,000 Welsh students who study in England. If numbers remain the same, in order for the funds coming in from England to exceed the money going to England, the fee level charged in Wales must be at least 64% of that charged in England, i.e. £5760 if all English universities charge £9K. That’s way above the putative mininum fee level of £4K announced by the WAG; if Welsh universities charge fees at that level then the WAG will be providing a large net subsidy to English universities.

And breaking even isn’t anywhere near enough. The WAG has signalled an intention to top-slice teaching budgets by about 40%. We don’t yet know how that will be implemented, university-by-university and department-by-department, but unless there are to be wholesale closures of “expensive” subjects (i.e. science and engineering) fee levels will have to rise substantially above the level calculated above. My own employer, Cardiff University, a member of the Russell Group of research-led universities, will probably want to brand itself alongside the English universities belonging to this club by charging a high fee. I hope it doesn’t do this, but the WAG’s policies are pushing it in that direction. As one of Wales’ biggest recruiters of English students, Cardiff will have to charge high fees in order to be seen as being of the same quality as leading English universities as well as to make up for funding lost in the latest round of deep cuts to recurrent grants.

The recent rhetoric of the WAG is all about achieving greater control of the HE sector in Wales to align it with strategic priorities within the Principality. This is certainly justifiable in principle as Wales has a university system which is far too fragmented and chaotic. Paradoxically, however, the WAG’s own policies seem to be forcing Welsh universities to look to England for income to make up for the big cuts recently announced.

So what’s the alternative?

I think it would be much more rational to ditch the commitment to fund Welsh-domiciled students for studying in England. If a student wants to go to England then they should experience the same fee regime as students domiciled there. After all, you wouldn’t expect the WAG to pay fees for a Welsh student to go to America, would you? The cash thus saved should be reinvested in Welsh Higher Education, in accordance with the WAG’s strategic priorities, and in keeping tuition fee levels as low as possible within the Principality. The best way to avoid tuition fee levels of £9K is to maintain core grants at a level that makes it unnecessary to charge so much.

It seems to me that this plan is a better deal for Welsh students, for English students wanting to study in Wales, for Welsh universities, and for the Welsh Assembly Government, but then I’m used to being in a minority of one.

Let’s just say I’ll be reading the party manifesto statements with great interest over the next few weeks…

2 Comments »

Local News

Posted in Education, Finance, Politics with tags Cardiff University, HEFCW, Higher Education, Physics, Universities Wales, University of Aberystwyth, University of Swansea, Welsh Assembly Government on March 25, 2011 by telescoper

I’m looking forward to tonight’s Annual Chaos Society Physics Ball, in advance of which I’ll have to go home to get my glad rags sorted out.

This posh night out should provide some welcome fun at the end of a week in which various items of news concerning Welsh universities have generated considerable anxiety around these parts.

For a start the Welsh Assembly Government has announced funding levels for HEFCW, the body that distributes funding to Welsh universities. According to a newspaper article

The Higher Education Funding Council for Wales (Hefcw) has seen its core budget slashed by 8.5% from £453m in 2010-11 to £388m in 2011-12.

Well, pardon my numeracy but a cut from £453m to £388m is actually a drop of 14.3% not 8.5%. This is much worse than the cuts already announced by HEFCE for English universities, although it remains to be seen how HEFCW will pass on this cut to the institutions it funds. Whatever it does will cause considerable pain, as this cut is being imposed a full year before universities will be allowed to recoup any losses by charging increased tuition fees.

There was also some even more local and even more disappointing news this week concerning HEFCW. Over the past year or so, the three remaining physics departments in Wales (at Cardiff, Swansea and Aberystwyth) have developed a proposal to form a strategic alliance along the lines of similar initiatives in Scotland, the Midlands, and South-East of England which resulted in the injection of large amounts of cash into physics research in those areas. The bid went into HEFCW in January and this week we received the decision. No.

I suppose the decision wasn’t surprising given the current funding climate, but it’s nevertheless extremely disappointing to realise we’ve missed a very important boat. If Welsh physics had gone down this road a decade ago – which I believe it should – then we would be in much better shape to face the very uncertain future that hangs over us. Still, I suppose it spares us the effort of trying to think up an acronym.

What’s especially worrying about this is that it seems to me that it makes it inevitable that Welsh physics will do as poorly in the forthcoming Research Excercise Framework as it did in the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise.
I think it’s worth quoting the observations made by Sub-panel 19 (physics) after the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise:

Sub-panel 19 regards the Scottish Universities Physics Alliance collaboration between Scottish departments as a highly positive development enhancing the quality of research in Scotland. South of the border other collaborations have also been formed with similar objectives. On the other hand we note with concern the performance of three Welsh departments where strategic management did not seem to have been as effective as elsewhere.

Ouch! The final sentence is completely out of order, of course, as it exceeds the remit of HEFCE (which administered the RAE) to try to dictate how Higher Education is run in Wales, as this responsibility is devolved to the Welsh Assembly Government. It is, however, to some extent a valid criticism. England and Scotland have pumped money into physics in order the develop strategic alliances. Wales hasn’t. And it isn’t going to either.

Given Wales’ relative autonomy when it comes to Higher Education I still don’t understand why its universities forced to participate in the REF anyway, but since it looks like we are stuck with it, I worry what the outcome will be, especially since Welsh physicists have been systematically excluded from the physics panel.

The last item of news concerns HEFCW itself. A report produced by John McCormick has recommended that it be scrapped and replaced with a new body called Universities Wales.

There are many reasons why scrapping HEFCW could turn out to be a good thing. For one thing, a new body might realise that continuing involvement in the REF is wasting a huge amount of time and money in the Welsh HE sector on an exercise that takes no account of Welsh strategic objectives. Nevertheless, I’m a bit worried by some of the rhetoric coming out of the Welsh Assembly about this issue.

Universities are not the property of the Welsh Assembly (which in fact only funds part of their activity). Universities are independent charitable institutions. Their autonomy is essential in allowing them to do what they do best, free from the short-term expediency that dominates the thinking of the political establishment.

But that’s not to say that the Welsh Assembly is wrong to expect universities to respond to the changing socio-economic landscape. It’s all a matter of balance. If Universities Wales is sufficiently “hands-off” to allow universities to do what they do best – teaching and research – but sufficiently “hands-on” that it can help the HE sector to reorganize in the ways it clearly must, then this could be a very good move.

And if HEFCW does die, I’m afraid there will be few around these parts that mourn its passing.

2 Comments »

Sine Nomine

Posted in Politics with tags Ralph Vaughan Williams, Sine Nomine, UCU Strike on March 24, 2011 by telescoper

This morning’s hymn is No. 641 from the English Hymnal, and is chosen in honour of all those participating in today’s strike by the University and College Union.

3 Comments »

Lawful Assembly

Posted in Bute Park, Politics with tags Riverside by-election, Welsh Assembly, Welsh Assembly Referendum on March 4, 2011 by telescoper

So there we have it. Yesterday’s votes are all counted and we have the results. Here’s a quick Friday afternoon round-up before I go to the Pub.

The biggest issue of the day involved Referendum on extending the law-making powers of the Welsh Assembly, in which the “yes” vote won by 517,132 votes to 297,380. This means that the Welsh Assembly will henceforth be able to make laws directly concerning those matters already devolved to it (including Health and Education). Contrary to popular myth, it does not broaden the Assembly’s power to cover new policy areas neither does it allow the Assembly to raise taxes. What it does is eliminate a bureaucratic bottleneck that previously required the Welsh Assembly to ask Parliament in Westminster every time it wanted to enact a law.

I think the “Yes” vote is a good thing, and the majority (63.5%) is healthy enough that there should be no griping about the outcome. In fact all but one region – Monmouthshire – voted in favour of the new powers, and Monmouthshire voted “no” by a mere 320 votes…

The only really disappointing thing was that the turnout was dismally low – only about 35%. Those that didn’t vote, however, have even less justification for complaining about the outcome.

On a smaller scale, the by-election for my local Council ward resulted in a gain for Labour from Plaid Cymru:

Steve Garrett (Plaid Cymru): 1,099
Iona Gordon (Labour): 1,700
Gwilym Owen (Liberal Democrat): 187
James Roach (Conservative) 369
Yvan Maurel (Green party): 277

Turnout was about 40%.

Pontcanna has been a Plaid Cymru (Welsh nationalist party) stronghold for quite a while, so I was moderately surprised at the result. I was personally quite pleased that Plaid Cymru lost this seat because of their support for the over-development of Bute Park, but I’ve no idea whether that issue contributed significantly to the result. I voted for the Green Party, incidentally, and was glad at least to see them beat the Liberal Democrats into 5th place. The new Labour councillor Iona Gordon is however a prominent campaigner on environmental issues and I wish her well.

The other major electoral result in the UK was a Parliamentary by-election in Barnsley, which saw the Liberal Democrats ending in a humiliating sixth place and losing their deposit. The only real question in my mind is why anyone would find that surprising given their track-record as part of the coalition government?

In a couple of months we’ll be voting again, this time for the Welsh Assembly. A great deal will depend on the eventual composition of the Senedd, especially for Welsh universities…

3 Comments »

Yes for Wales!

Posted in Bute Park, Politics with tags Bute Park, Green Party, Law-making powers, Referendum, Thursday 3rd March, voting, Welsh Assembly on March 2, 2011 by telescoper

Still suffused with a peculiar form of vicarious national pride after last night’s rousing St David’s Day concert in Cardiff – of which I hope to do a review later today – I thought I’d put up a gratuitous picture of the daffodils in Bute Park because they’re one of the two official emblems of Wales.

The other national emblem of Wales is the leek, but I couldn’t find any of them growing in Bute Park. It’s the wrong time of year anyway.

More importantly, tomorrow (Thursday 3rd March) is the date of the Referendum on Welsh Assembly powers. The question is a fairly uninteresting one, actually, and is simply about whether the Welsh Assembly should be allowed to make laws itself – concerning those matters over which it has devolved responsibility – rather than the current system which requires oversight by the House of Commons.

As a matter of fact I’ve got another vote to cast tomorrow, in a Council by-election. My ward is currently controlled by Plaid Cymru, but I will be voting for the Green Party in protest against the over-development of Bute Park.

In the Referendum I’ve decided to vote Yes for Wales, a stance which all the major parties agree on in fact. I’m pretty confident the Yes vote will win, but am concerned by a sense of apathy over this, and the Welsh Assembly elections coming up in May.

I think it’s very sad to compare the courage and determination shown by people across North Africa and in the Middle East protesting for democracy, with the attitude of so many here in a mature democracy who just can’t be bothered to exercise the rights that others struggled so hard to establish for us. If it matters so much to people in Egypt, Algeria and Libya to have the right to vote then it matters here too! Call me old-fashioned, but I think the right to vote is not only a privilege but also a duty.

So whichever side of whatever argument you’re on, and wherever it is you’re voting, please get down to the polling station and put your cross where it counts!

9 Comments »

Disturbing Admissions

Posted in Education, Politics with tags A-level, admissions, UCAS, Universities on January 18, 2011 by telescoper

In a rare moment of wakefulness during yesterday’s Board of Studies, I listened to a report from our departmental admissions tutor about the state of play with applications for entry onto our physics courses next year. It was good news – applications are up more than 50% on last year – but this was tempered by the fact that our quota has gone down slightly, owing to the presence of a cap on student numbers. I’m not sure whether the increase, perhaps caused by students trying to get into university before the fee goes up to £9K, is echoed around the country, but it seems likely that competition for places will be intense this year, with the almost certain result that many students will be disappointed at being unable to get into their first choice university.

Coincidentally, I noticed a story on the BBC at the weekend suggesting that the whole timetable of university admissions might change. What the government is planning remains to be seen, but there’s no doubting the system is far from perfect and if we had the opportunity to design a process for university admissions from scratch, there is no way on Earth we would end up with a system like the current one.

As things stand, students apply for university places through UCAS before they have their final A-level results (which don’t come out until July). Most applications are in by January of the year of intended admission, in fact. The business of selecting candidates and making offers therefore makes use of “predicted grades” as supplied by teachers of the applicant.

According to the BBC news

..under the current system those from poorer backgrounds typically have their grades under-predicted.

I simply don’t know whether there is any information to back this up – in my (limited) experience most teachers systematically overestimate the grades of their pupils – but if it is the case then it would be a good reason for changing the timetable so that potential students could apply once they have their results in the bag. They can do that now, of course, but only if they take a gap-year, applying for admission the year after they have their A-levels.

But the inaccuracy of predicted A-level grades is not the only absurdity in the current system. Universities such as Cardiff, where I work, have to engage in enormous amounts of guesswork during the admissions process. Suppose a department has a quota of 100, defining the target number students to take in. They might reasonably get a minimum of 500 applications for these 100 places, depending on the popularity of university and course.

Each student is allowed to apply to 5 different institutions. If a decision is made to make an offer of a place, it would normally be conditional on particular A-level grades (e.g. AAB). At the end of the process the student is expected to pick a first choice (CF) and an insurance choice (CI) out of the offers they receive. They will be expected to go to their first choice if they get the required grades, to the insurance choice if they don’t make it into the first choice but get grades sufficient for the reserve. If they don’t make either grade they have to go into the clearing system and take pot luck among those universities that have places free after all the CFs and CIs have been settled.

Each university department has to decide how many offers to make. This will always be larger than the number of places, because not all applicants will make an offer their CF. We have to honour all offers made, but there are severe penalties if we under or over recruit. How many offers to make then? What fraction of students with an offer will put us first? What fraction of them will actually get the required grade?

The answers to these questions are not at all obvious, so the whole system runs on huge levels of uncertainty. I’m amazed that each year we manage to get anywhere close to the correct number, and we usually get very close indeed by the end.

It’s a very skilled job, being an admissions tutor, but there’s no question it would all be fairer on both applicants and departments to remove most of the guesswork.

But there is the rub. There are only two ways I can see of changing the timetable to allow what the government seems to want to do:

Have the final A-level examinations earlier
Start the university academic year later

The unavoidable consequence of the first option would be the removal of large quantities of material from the A-level syllabus so the exams could be held several months earlier, which would be a disaster in terms of preparing students for university.

The second option would mean starting the academic year in, say, January instead of October. This would in my opinion be preferable to 1, but would still be difficult because it would interfere with all the other things a university does as well as teaching, especially research. The summer recess (July-September), wherein much research is currently done, could be changed to an autumn one (October-December) but there would be a great deal of resistance, especially from the older establishments; I can’t see Oxbridge being willing to abandon its definitions of teaching term! And what would the students do between July and January?

The apply-after-A-level idea has been floated before, about a decade ago, but it sank without trace. I wonder if it will do any better this time around?

26 Comments »

Blydhen Nowydh Da!

Posted in Biographical, Education, Music, Politics, Science Politics, Sport with tags astronomy, Cardiff University, Planck on January 1, 2011 by telescoper

I hope the blogosphere hasn’t got too bad a hangover this morning. I don’t, although I did have a nice lie in until about 11am when the lure of the Guardian prize crossword drew me out of bed and down to the newsagents. Luckily, I remembered to get dressed first. The crossword turned out to be quite a nice one to start the year with, by the perennial Araucaria, but it didn’t take all that long to do so I’ve got time to do a bit of shopping and a go on my exercise bike. Yes, that’s my New Year’s resolution. More shopping.

I know 2010 was a tough year for many people for many different reasons. I wouldn’t say it’s exactly been brilliant for me either, but I am looking forward to 2011 whatever it might bring. The first results from Planck will be released very soon (on 11th January, in fact), which will give me something exciting to blog about. More generally, the recent financial settlement for STFC was not as poor as many of us expected so the future doesn’t look quite as grim for UK astronomy as we feared.

There are exciting developments in store for the School of Physics & Astronomy at Cardiff University, where I work, with (hopefully) a number of new staff members joining us soon. Later on in the year we’ll be rolling out a completely redsigned set of physics courses which we’ve been working on for over a year. In addition we’ll be starting to work more closely with Swansea University in order to provide a broader range of advanced options for physics students at both institutions.

Of course behind all this there’s still considerable uncertainty about the funding situation for universities which are facing big cuts in government grants and having to increase tuition fees charged to students. Whether and to what extent this will deter students from going to university remains to be seen. The financial pressure will certainly lead to mergers and possibly to closures across the UK over the next few years, although only time will tell how many.

On the cultural side there’s a large number of concerts at St David’s Hall and a full season of Opera at WNO to look forward to, including a performance of Cosi fan Tutte on my birthday. Cardiff plays host to the First Test match between England and Sri Lanka at the end of May, and a one-day international against India in September. I might even get myself a membership of Glamorgan Cricket Club, something I’ve toyed with doing for a couple of years now. There’s also a good chance that Cardiff City F.C. might get themselves promoted to the Premiership, something that would be great for the city of Cardiff. It wouldn’t be beyond them to fall at the last fence, as they have a habit of doing..

May 2011 will also see the Welsh Assembly elections, and there will be a referendum on further law-making powers for the WAG on 3rd March.

On the wider political scene the question is whether the governing coalition’s cuts will force the economy back into recession or not. I don’t know the answer to that, but I do know that many ordinary working people are going to lose their jobs and many less advantaged members of society will have their benefits cut. Meanwhile the people who took us to the brink of economic ruin will no doubt carry on getting their bonuses.

In spite of all that, let me end by wishing you peace and prosperity for the New Year and beyond. And if that’s not possible, just remember Nil Illegitimi Carborundum.

25 Comments »

You didn’t ask, but I’ll tell you anyway…

Posted in History, Politics with tags Alexander the Great, Army of Lovers, Don't ask don't tell, gay, homosexuality, lesbian, Philip II of Macedonia, Sacred Band of Thebes, US Army on December 19, 2010 by telescoper

I just chanced across the news that the United States Senate has voted to repeal the policy of “Don’t ask, don’t tell”. This silly rule required gay servicemen and women to conceal their sexual orientation or risk being kicked out of the services. It was always an awful compromise and I’m glad to see it has been scrapped.

One of the arguments used against allowing gay people to be open about their sexuality while in the armed forces was that this would be “bad for morale”. I’m not quite sure why, but that’s what people say. Perhaps what it means is that a lot of straight military personnel are deeply prejudiced and that it would be bad for morale to have that prejudice challenged.

Until 2000, the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defence imposed an outright ban on lesbian and gay people serving in the armed forces. However, in 1999 the European Court of Human Rights ruled that ban illegal. Now, at least officially, the MoD has a much more open and inclusive policy. One regularly sees official representation at Gay Pride marches and so on. Indeed, in 2008, General Sir Richard Dannatt, Chief of the General Staff, said in a speech that

respect for gays, lesbian, bi-sexual and transsexual officers and soldiers was now “a command responsibility” and was vital for “operational effectiveness”

It would have been hard to imagine even ten years ago that a senior officer in the British Army would make such a statement. I’m sure openly gay soldiers still have a pretty tough time in the army, but we’re heading in the right direction. Times have changed.

But all this is perhaps not as new as you might think.

I’m now going to bore you with a bit of history that might surprise you. The elite division of the Theban army in the 4th Century BC was an outfit called the Sacred Band of Thebes. This consisted of about 300 men, hand-picked for their courage and fighting skill. Or not so much 300 men, but 150 same-sex (male) couples; this was the legendary Army of Lovers. Obviously there wasn’t any need for “don’t ask, don’t tell” in ancient Thebes.

The inspiration for this special unit derived from Plato who, in the Symposium, said

And if there were only some way of contriving that a state or an army should be made up of lovers and their beloved, they would be the very best governors of their own city, abstaining from all dishonour, and emulating one another in honour; and when fighting at each other’s side, although a mere handful, they would overcome the world. For what lover would not choose rather to be seen by all mankind than by his beloved, either when abandoning his post or throwing away his arms? He would be ready to die a thousand deaths rather than endure this. Or who would desert his beloved or fail him in the hour of danger?

Initially the members of the Sacred Band were scattered among the rest of the soldiers, in order to raise morale (!), but later on they were all united in a single fighting division, the “special forces” of the Theban army. They were responsible for several famous victories, including the Battle of Leuctra which established Theban independence from Spartan rule.

But brave and steadfast though they were, they eventually met an adversary that even they couldn’t withstand. At the Battle of Chaeronea in 338 BC they fought an army led by Philip II of Macedonia one of whose generals was his son, a young man by the name of Alexander. The Macedonian army had a new infantry tactic that gave it the edge over all armies of its age. This was the phalanx, a large but tightly bunched and highly disciplined group of soldiers with interlocking shields and bristling with spears, which was impervious to cavalry and archery alike. A few years later when Alexander became King of Macedonia and set off on his journey to Greatness, the phalanx continued to be the mainstay of his army and it allowed him to defeat huge forces at least five or six times the size of his own.

At Chaeronea the fearsome phalanx made mincemeat of the rank and file of the Theban army. In the face of the Macedonian onslaught, the Sacred Band stood its ground to the last, but their resistance was futile. At the end of the battle, their corpses were found piled one on top of the other. They hadn’t given an inch, but all had died where they had stood. The Army of Lovers was no more.

In about 300 BC the citizens of Thebes erected a memorial to the Sacred Band where they had been buried, with full military honours, by Philip II’s soldiers, at the spot where they had fallen. When this was excavated in 1890, 254 skeletons were found, neatly arranged in rows.

The point I’m trying to make with this bit of ancient history is that our attitudes to sexuality are not built in. They’re all formed by social conventions. In fact, bisexuality was quite normal in Ancient Greece, so nobody had any reason to think of homosexuality as some kind of “otherness” that could be a focus of discrimination. Alexander the Great himself had relationships with both men and women and, although he was clearly a megalomaniac and not at all a nice person, he was undeniably rather good at being a soldier.

There’s therefore no reason why gays and lesbians shouldn’t serve with distinction in the army, or anywhere else for that matter. The problem’s not with them, but with the rest of you.

4 Comments »

Science funding can’t be democratic if education isn’t

Posted in Politics with tags Dan Hind, funding, Science, Science funding on December 15, 2010 by telescoper

An opinion piece in New Scientist by Dan Hind (who apparently has a new book out) just caught my eye, and I couldn’t resist a quick comment.

The piece makes some good points. One is that much current science funding is actually nothing more than a direct subsidy for private industry. This troubles me. As I’ve blogged before, I think research that really is near-market shouldn’t be funded by the tax payer but by private investment by banks or venture capitalists. Publically funded science should be for speculative research that, regardless of whether it pays off commercially, is good from a cultural and intellectual perspective. I know I’m in a minority of my colleagues on this, but that’s what I think.

Where I disagree strongly with Dan Hind is the suggestion that science funding should be given

… to new bodies set up to allocate resources on the basis of a democratic vote. Scientists could apply to these bodies for funding and we could all have a say in what research is given support.

I can see that there are good intentions behind this suggestion, but in practice I think it would be a disaster. The problem is that the fraction of the general population that knows enough about science to make informed decisions about where to spend funding is just too small. That goes for the political establishment too.

If we left science funding to a democratic vote we’d be wasting vaulable taxpayer’s money on astrology, homeopathy and who knows what other kind of new age quackery. It’s true that the so-called experts get it wrong sometimes, but if left to the general public things would only get worse. I wish things were different, but this idea just wouldn’t work.

On the other hand, I don’t at all disagree with the motivation behind this suggestion. In an increasingly technologically-driven society, the gap between the few in and the many out of the know poses a grave threat to our existence as an open and inclusive democracy. The public needs to be better informed about science (as well as a great many other things). Two areas need attention.

In fields such as my own, astronomy, there’s a widespread culture of working very hard at outreach. This overarching term includes trying to get people interested in science and encouraging more kids to take it seriously at school and college, but also engaging directly with members of the public and institutions that represent them. Not all scientists take the same attitude, though, and we must try harder. Moves are being made to give more recognition to public engagement, but a drastic improvement is necessary if our aim is to make our society genuinely democratic.

But the biggest issue we have to confront is education. The quality of science education must improve, especially in state schools where pupils sometimes don’t have appropriately qualified teachers and so are unable to learn, e.g. physics, properly. The less wealthy are becoming systematically disenfranchised through their lack of access to the education they need to understand the complex issues relating to life in an advanced technological society.

If we improve school education, we may well get more graduates in STEM areas too although this government’s cuts to Higher Education make that unlikely. More science graduates would be good for many reasons, but I don’t think the greatest problem facing the UK is the lack of qualified scientists – it’s that too few ordinary citizens have even a vague understanding of what science is and how it works. They are therefore unable to participate in an informed way in discussions of some of the most important issues facing us in the 21st century.

We can’t expect everyone to be a science expert, but we do need higher levels of basic scientific literacy throughout our society. Unless this happens we will be increasingly vulnerable to manipulation by the dark forces of global capitalism via the media they control. You can see it happening already.

12 Comments »

Why should Wales subsidise English universities?

Posted in Education, Finance, Politics with tags Higher Education, Leighton Andrews, Plaid Cymru, Wales, Welsh Assembly Government on December 5, 2010 by telescoper

As the argument about increased tuition fees for English universities intensifies in the run-up to Thursday’s debate in the House of Commons, the Welsh Assembly Government last week announced that fees for students in Wales would rise to a basic level of £6000 per year, with a possible increase to £9000 “in certain circumstances”.

I’m a bit surprised that the WAG made this announcement in advance of the vote in Westminster, as it seems to me to be by no means certain that England will introduce the post-Browne system that Wales is copying. If the increased fee measure for England doesn’t get through Parliament then Welsh universities will find themselves out on a limb.

More generally, I find it extremely disappointing that there seems to be absolutely no independent thinking going on in Wales about Higher Education funding. The responsibility for this is devolved to the WAG, but time and time again it simply copies what the English are doing. What’s the point of having devolution if you haven’t got politicians willing and able to be different from the Westminster crowd?

One thing that Welsh Assembly Minister Leighton Andrews did announce that isn’t the case in England is that students domiciled in Wales would be protected from any tuition fee rise by a new system of grants, meaning that the Welsh Assembly will pick up the tab for Welsh students. They will still have to pay the existing fee level of £3290 per annum, but the WAG will pay the extra (between about £3K and £6K). This is good news for the students of course, but the grants will be available to Welsh students not just for Welsh universities but wherever they choose to study. Since about 16,000 Welsh students are currently at university in England, this means that the WAG is handing over a great big chunk (at least 16,000 × £3000 = £48 million) of its hard-earned budget straight back to England. It’s a very strange thing to do when the WAG is constantly complaining that the Barnett formula doesn’t give them enough money in the first place.

What’s more, the Welsh Assembly grants for Welsh students will be paid for by top-slicing the teaching grants that HECFW makes to Welsh universities. So further funding cuts for universities in Wales are going to be imposed precisely in order to subsidise English universities. This is hardly in the spirit of devolution either!

English students wanting to study in Wales will have to pay full whack, but will be paying to attend universities whose overall level of state funding is even lower than in England (at least for STEM subjects whose subsidy is protected in England). Currently about 25,000 English students study in Wales compared with the 16,000 Welsh students who study in England. If the new measures go ahead I can see fewer English students coming to Wales, and more Welsh students going to England. This will have deeply damaging consequences for the Welsh Higher Education system.

It’s very surprising that the Welsh Nationalists, Plaid Cymru, who form part of the governing coalition in the Welsh Assembly, have gone along with this strange move. It’s good for Welsh students, but not good for Welsh universities. I would have thought that the best plan for Welsh students would be to keep up the bursaries but apply them only for study in Wales. That way both students and institutions will benefit and the Welsh Assembly’s budget will actually be spent in Wales, which is surely what is supposed to happen…

POSTCRIPT: Leighton Andrews’ speech to the Welsh Assembly can be seen here.

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