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Posted in Education, Finance, Politics with tags , , , , , , , 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.


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Harriet Presents…

Posted in Education with tags , on February 18, 2011 by telescoper

Now here’s a short video called a (presented by the legendary Harriet Parfitt) explaining the joys of studying  in the School of Physics & Astronomy at Cardiff University. It’s somewhat spoiled by the appearance of yours truly (filmed during a recent first-year  Astrophysical Concepts lecture) but apart from that it’s really rather good!


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Flooding into London

Posted in Biographical with tags , , , , , , on January 14, 2011 by telescoper

A brave bunch of hardy Cardiff  University astronomers are heading into London today for a meeting of the Royal Astronimical Society in London which celebrates the first year of science from the Herschel Space Observatory. This wouldn’t normally constitute too arduous a trip, but it turns out after the last couple of days torrential rain in Wales and the South-West of England, there is flooding on the line at Sodding Chipbury Chipping Sodbury which has sent the railway network into one of its regular episodes of chaos. Half the trains from Cardiff to London are cancelled, and the other half diverted all round the houses so they will take at least an extra half-hour to reach their destination at Paddington.

There isn’t any flooding actually in Cardiff, but the River Taff, which hibernated peacefully through the recent snowy period, has now sprung back into life and seems to be in an angry mood. I took these snaps yesterday as I walked into work, so you can see the water level is high enough to submerge some of the riverside shrubs and trees, but not high enough (yet) to threaten the embankments.

At times like this the Taff is more than a little scary, not so much because of the way it looks but because of the sound of it growling along down to Cardiff Bay, carrying the occasional car tyre and traffic cone with it.

I suppose this is small potatoes compared to the terrible floods in Australia, Brazil and elsewhere in the world, but it is quite exasperating, especially since it happens so regularly yet still catches the train companies completely unawares.

Anyway, I don’t know if the first wave of Cardiff folk managed to get to London in time for the start of the meeting. I had a couple of things to do this morning so decided to go later, even though that meant missing some of the talks that are closer to my own interests. I did think about cancelling my trip entirely, but decided in the end to give it a go. I hope I make it there at least in time for dinner at the RAS Club.

But then there’s the question of what time I’ll get  home tonight…


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Blydhen Nowydh Da!

Posted in Biographical, Education, Music, Politics, Science Politics, Sport with tags , , 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.

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Wales set for university mergers

Posted in Education, Finance with tags , , , , , , on December 22, 2010 by telescoper

Just another quick post to pass on the news just out that the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales (HEFCW) has announced that the number of universities in Wales must reduce by a half over the next two years.

I’ve argued already on this blog that there are too many small separate higher education institutions in Wales and that’s a view which is probably held by many across the sector. Mergers and/or closures have seemed to me to be inevitable for some time given the general climate of austerity and the consequent chill winds blowing through the groves of academe. According to HEFCW, the plan is that by 2013 no “region” of Wales will have any more than two universities although I’m not sure what counts as a region.

Until recently there were four different “universities” with campuses in Cardiff: Cardiff University (where I work); the University of Glamorgan (which has a presence in Cardiff, but which has its main campus in Pontypridd); the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama (RWCMD); and the University of Wales Institute, Cardiff (UWIC).

In fact RWCMD was absorbed by the University of Glamorgan a short time ago, but still uses its old name as part of the merged institution.
Apparently one more merger will be necessary to satisfy HEFCW’s requirement, which I guess will involve UWIC also being absorbed by the University of Glamorgan. If that does happen, I hope HEFCW will keep a close eye on matters of governance. The UoG doesn’t seem to me to have a very strong track-record with respect to resafeguarding standards of academic practice.

Depending on how “region” is interpreted, there might even be pressure to include the University of Wales, Newport in an even bigger new South East Wales institution presumably headed by the University of Glamorgan.

Elsewhere in Wales the merger process is already underway. Last week, Swansea Metropolitan and the University of Wales Trinity St David announced plans to create a united institution. Going back one stage, the University of Wales Trinity St David was itself formed through the merger earlier this year of Wales’ oldest education institutions, Trinity University College, Carmarthen and the University of Wales Lampeter. Although these have merged it appears they will carry on using their existing names, which may cause some confusion but we’ll have to see how it goes.

It’s important to note that universities are officially independent bodies, so HEFCW (through which public funding is channeled to them) can’t really just tell them to merge. However, many of the smaller institutions are so dependent on state funding that they basically have to do what HEFCW tells them or face financial oblivion. Of course it will require Vice-chancellors to agree, and since presumably half of them will cease to be VCs, there will be some reluctance. Turkeys tend not to vote for Christmas. However, HEFCW has promised that “core funding will be deployed in ways which lend force to the achievement of that target”. In other words, they’ll be calling on the odd VC to make them an offer they can’t refuse…


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Uncertain Universities…

Posted in Education, Politics with tags , , , , on November 24, 2010 by telescoper

Interesting snippets of Higher Education news today from the BBC website.

It seems that the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales (HECFW) has voiced concerns about the sustainability of no less than five Welsh universities. Although it hasn’t named them, I think it’s likely to be those most dependent on state funding which is pretty certain to shrink drastically over the next few years. I’ll leave it as an exercise for the reader to identify the five most likely to fold. This news has emerged as a result of a request by the BBC under the Freedom of Information Act.

This comes as no surprise to me, actually. It’s clear that, for its size and population,  Wales has too many separate institutions currently regarded as “universities”. A sustainable system would have less than half the number than we have now, but managing the change to a more rational structure is bound to be a difficult process, especially if it is allowed to happen by organized neglect (which seems to be the plan). Wales drastically underfunds its Higher Education sector compared to England anyway and, with what jam there is spread over far too many institutions, there’s very little by way of resources to devote to any real sort of strategic development.

Another interesting bit of information in the BBC report is that the Welsh Assembly is expected to outline its response to the Browne Review before Christmas. I was expecting the WAG to but  the introduction of any new fee system will probably have to wait until after the Welsh Assembly elections next May.

Meanwhile Cardiff University students are holding a protest against the possible introduction of fees at the very moment I am writing this, as part of a day of action across the UK. Although there are no definite plans to increase fees in Wales at the moment because the WAG has not announced its policy, I think most of us working in academia think a big increase in fees is imminent in Wales, just as it is in England (provided the necessary legislation gets through the House of Commons). It remains to be seen, however, whether Welsh universities will be allowed to charge as much as English ones, i.e. up to £9000 per annum.


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Finding Gravitational Lenses, the Herschel Way…

Posted in The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , , , , on November 4, 2010 by telescoper

It’s nice to have the chance to blog for once about some exciting astrophysics rather than doom and gloom about budget cuts. Tomorrow (5th November) sees the publication of a long-awaited article (by Negrello et al.)  in the journal Science (abstract here) that presents evidence of discovery of a number of new gravitational lens systems using the Herschel Space Observatory.

There is a press release accompanying this paper on the  Cardiff University website, and a longer article on the Herschel Outreach website, from which I nicked the following nice graphic (click on it for a bigger version).

This shows rather nicely how a gravitational lens works: it’s basically a concentration of matter (in this case a galaxy) along the line of sight from the observer to a background source (in this case another galaxy). Light from the background object gets bent by the foreground object, forming multiple  images which are usually both magnified and distorted. Gravitational lensing itself is not a new discovery but what is especially interesting about the new results are that they suggest a much more efficient way of finding lensed systems than we have previously had.

In the past they have usually been found by laboriously scouring optical (or sometimes radio) images of very faint galaxies. A candidate lens (perhaps a close-set group of images with similar colours), then this candidate is followed up with detailed spectroscopy to establish whether the images are actually all at the same redshift, which they should be if they are part of a lens system. Unfortunately, only about one-in-ten of candidate lens systems found this way turn out to be actual lenses, so this isn’t a very efficient way of finding them. Even multiple needles are hard to find in a haystack.

The new results have emerged from a large survey, called H-ATLAS, of galaxies detected in the far-infrared/submillimetre part of the spectrum. Even the preliminary stages of this survey covered a sufficiently large part of the sky – and sufficiently many galaxies within the region studied – to suggest  the presence of a significant population of galaxies that bear all the hallmarks of being lensed.

The new Science article discusses five surprisingly bright objects found early on during the course of the H-ATLAS survey. The galaxies found with optical telescopes in the directions of these sources would not normally be expected to be bright at the far-infrared wavelengths observed by Herschel. This suggested that the galaxies seen in visible light might be gravitational lenses magnifying much more distant background galaxies seen by Herschel. With the relatively poor resolution that comes from working at long wavelengths, Herschel can’t resolve the individual images produced by the lens, but does collect more photons from a lensed galaxy than an unlensed one, so it appears much brighter in the detectors.

 

Detailed spectroscopic follow-up using ground-based radio and sub-millimetre telescopes confirmed these ideas :  the galaxies seen by the optical telescopes are much closer, each ideally positioned to create gravitational lenses.

These results demonstrate that gravitational lensing is probably at work in all the distant and bright galaxies seen by Herschel. This in turn, suggests that in the full H-ATLAS survey might provide huge numbers of gravitational lens systems, enough to perform a number of powerful statistical tests of theories of galaxy formation and evolution. It’s a bit of a cliché to say so, but it looks like Herschel will indeed open up a new window on the distant Universe.

P.S. For the record, although I’m technically a member of the H-ATLAS consortium, I was not directly involved in this work and am not among the authors.

P.P.S. This announcement also gives me the opportunity to pass on the information that all the data arising from the H-ATLAS science demonstration phase is now available online for you to play with!


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The Day After: A Welsh Perspective

Posted in Education, Politics, Science Politics with tags , , , , , , , on October 21, 2010 by telescoper

It’s well after 11am and I’m still at home. Came down last night with some sort of bug that kept me awake nearly all night with frequent visits to the smallest room in the house. Whatever it is is still rumbling on so I’ve decided to stay at home until I give myself the all clear.

This sudden attack of lurgy is probably not connected with yesterday’s dramatic announcements of the results of the comprehensive spending review, which are now being dissected and analysed all over the mainstream press, the blogosphere, and countless common rooms around the country.

I haven’t got the energy right now to go over the ramifications in detail, but encourage you to read the whole thing, which is available in a nifty online reader for your perusal. I will, however, make a few brief comments, with particular emphasis on the situation here in Wales.

First, the announcement of large cuts to the teaching budget administered by HEFCE has clearly sent shockwaves through academia. It appears that only STEM subjects will continue to receive the state contribution and in future students will have to bear the full cost of tuition (but only after they’ve graduated and started to earn over the threshold of £21K). As a supporter of the Science is Vital campaign I was relieved that we seem to won a victory, although the war is far from over. However, I feel great sadness at the cost that our success seems likely to inflict on other disciplines. If you think these are nervous times for scientists, imagine what it must be like working in the Arts and Humanities.

Of course this all applies directly only to English universities: the budgets for Higher Education in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are administered separately, so in principle things could work out very differently for Higher Education here in Wales.

However, the total amount of money available for the Welsh Assembly Government (WAG) to spend is fixed by the Westminster government through the Barnett Formula. This determines the overall cash for the devolved governments by allocating a proportion of what England spends on those things that are devolved., i.e. Wales is notionally allocated an amount for Higher Education which is proportional to HEFCE’s allocation and similar for other areas of spending such as Health. Once the size of the overall pot is fixed, however, the WAG is not obliged to spend its money in the same way that England does.

Buried in the pages of the CSR document is Wales’ allocation over the CSR period, which shows real terms cut of about 7.5% over the term. However, the Welsh Assembly Government’s reaction puts it rather differently:

In real terms, our total Budget is set to fall by around 3.1% per year on average, or 12% in total over the coming four years. This means that our Budget in 2014/15 will be £1.8bn lower in real terms than it is this year. Overall, in cash terms the reductions to our Budget will be 3% over the period.

Our capital Budget has been hit particularly hard, and will be cut by 40% in real terms – 34% in cash terms – over the next four years. This substantial reduction, particularly next year, where the cut is more than 25% in real terms, will clearly have a major impact on the private as well as the public sectors.

These figures seem different from those in the CSR document, which might be because of some nuance such as the way capital expenditure is accounted. If anyone can explain the discrepancy through the comments box I’d be grateful.

The main point is, though, that if Wales is going to keep current levels of investment in Higher Education (or even cut less than the English are doing) then it will have to take the money from elsewhere, which is not going to be easy to get through the Welsh Assembly. The picture, therefore, may not be any better here in Wales than it is in England, and could well turn out even worse, depending on how the WAG sets its own spending priorities. To complicate matters further, there’s an election next year for the Welsh Assembly, so there’s a wider political perspective to consider.

Within the overall issue of Higher Education spending is the question of whether Wales will decide to protect funding for STEM disciplines at the expense of all others. The WAG has already produced a document that suggests a strong focus on the so-called regional agenda, which may mean more money going into Further Education, vocational training, and part-time studies rather than, say, research-led science. I know what I would prefer, but whatever I say, it’s the WAG’s decisions that really count. And so it should be. After all, unlike me, they were elected!

Of course, if STEM subjects aren’t protected in Wales, those of us working in those areas are likely to lose even more ground to English universities, which already out-perform us in many respects. We have to make our case as best we can and see what happens.

However, I will end with some more local news which is extremely promising. Yesterday we had a staff meeting in the School of Physics & Astronomy at Cardiff University during which two extremely positive items came to light. One is that we will shortly be interviewing for the extra physics posts we advertised some time ago. Hopefully there will be a new Professor and three new Lecturers joining the staff in the very near future. I’m told we had a huge number of applicants for these positions, and the shortlists for these positions are very strong indeed. This is all very encouraging.

On top of this there is another exciting development on the horizon. After the disappointing outcome of the last RAE for physics in Wales, we have been thinking very hard at working closer with colleagues at Swansea with a view to building a sort of South Wales Physics Alliance. The departments are complementary in many ways: Swansea does particle physics, but Cardiff doesn’t; Cardiff does astronomy, but Swansea doesn’t. Where we are both relatively weak is in so-called “mainstream” physics, which is in the minority in both departments. With a bit of help, I think these two small(ish) departments could form a research institute that really challenges our competitors abroad (especially in England). I’m strongly in favour of this plan, and hope it goes ahead with full HEFCW support (including extra cash), but in this as in some many things, it’s a case of “fingers crossed”.


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Open Admissions

Posted in Education with tags , , , , , , , on August 21, 2010 by telescoper

As I predicted  last week, the A-level results announced on Thursday showed another increase in pass rates and in the number of top grades awarded, although I had forgotten that this year saw the introduction of the new A* grade. Overall, about 27% of students got an A or an A*, although the number getting an A* varied enormously from one course to another. In Further Maths, for example, 30% of the candidates who took the examination achieved an A* grade.

Although I have grave misgivings about the rigour of the assessment used in A-level science subjects, I do nevertheless heartily congratulate all those who have done well. In no way were my criticisms of the examinations system intended to be criticisms of the students who take them and they thoroughly deserve to celebrate their success.

Another interesting fact worth mentioning is that the number of pupils taking A-level physics rose again this year, by just over 5%, to a total of just over 30,000. After many years of decline in the popularity of physics as an A-level choice, it has now grown steadily over the past three years. Of course not everyone who does physics at A-level goes on to do it at university, but this is nevertheless a good sign for the future health of the subject.

There was a whopping 11.5% growth in the number of students taking Further Mathematics too, and this seems to be part of a general trend for more students to be doing science and technology subjects.

The newspapers have also been full of  tales of a frantic rush during the clearing process and the likelihood that many well-qualified aspiring students might miss out on university places altogether. Part of the reason for this is that the government recently put the brake on the expansion of university places, but it’s not all down to government cuts. It’s also at least partly because of the steady increase in the performance of students at A-level. More students are making their offers than before, so the options available for those who did slightly less well than they had hoped very much more limited.

In fact if you analyse the figures from UCAS you will see that as of Thursday 19th August 2010, 383,230 students had been secured a place at university. That’s actually about 10,000 more than at the corresponding stage last year. There were about 50,000 more students eligible to go into clearing this year (183,000 versus 135,000 in 2009), but at least part of this is due to people trying again who didn’t succeed last year. Clearly they won’t all find a place, so there’ll be a number of very disappointed school-leavers around, but they also can try again next year. So although it’s been a tough week for quite a few prospective students, it’s not really the catastrophe that some of the tabloids have been screaming about.

I’m not directly involved in the undergraduate admissions process for the School of Physics & Astronomy at Cardiff University, where I work, but try to keep up with what’s going on. It’s an extremely strange system and I think it’s fair to say that if we could design an admissions process from scratch we wouldn’t end up with the one we have now. Each year our School is given a target number of students to recruit; this year around 85. On the basis of the applications we receive we make a number of offers (e.g.  AAB for three A-levels, including Mathematics and Physics, for the MPhys programme). However, we have to operate a bit like an airline and make more offers than there are places. This is because (a) not all the people we make offers to will take up their offer and (b) not everyone who takes up an offer will make the grades.

In fact students usually apply to 5 universities and are allowed to accept one firm offer (CF) and one insurance choice (CI), in case they missed the grades for their firm choice. If they miss the grades for their CI they go into clearing. This year, as well as a healthy bunch of CFs, we had a huge number of CI acceptances, meaning we were the backup choice for many students whose ideal choice lay elsewhere. We usually don’t end up recruiting all that many students as CIs – most students do make the grades they need for their CF, but if they miss by a whisker the university they put first often takes them anyway. However, this year many of our CIs held CFs with universities we knew were going  to be pretty full, and in England at any rate, institutions are going to be fined if they exceed their quotas. It therefore looked possible that we might go over quota because of an unexpected influx of CIs caused by other universities applying their criteria more rigorously than they had in the past. We are, of course, obliged to honour all offers made as part of this process. Here in Wales we don’t actually get fined for overshooting the quota, but it would have been tough fitting excess numbers into the labs and organizing tutorials for them all.

Fortunately, our admissions team (led by Helen Hunt Carole Tucker) is very experienced at reading the lie of the land. As it turned out, the feared influx of CIs didn’t materialise, and we even had a dip into the clearing system to  recruit one or two good quality applicants who had fallen through the cracks elsewhere.  We seem to have turned out all right again this year, so it’s business as usual in October. In case you’re wondering, Cardiff University is now officially full up for 2010.

There’s a lot of guesswork involved in this system which seems to me to make it unnecessarily fraught for us, and obviously also for the students too! It would make more sense for students to apply after they’ve got their results not before, but this would require wholesale changes to the academic year. It’s been suggested before, but never got anywhere. One thing we do very well in the Higher Education sector is inertia!

I thought I’d end with another “news” item from the Guardian that claims that the Russell Group of universities – to which Cardiff belongs – operates a blacklist of A-level subjects that it considers inappropriate:

The country’s top universities have been called on to come clean about an unofficial list or lists of “banned” A-level subjects that may have prevented tens of thousands of state school pupils getting on to degree courses.

Teachers suspect the Russell Group of universities – which includes Oxford and Cambridge – of rejecting outright pupils who take A-level subjects that appear on the unpublished lists.

The lists are said to contain subjects such as law, art and design, business studies, drama and theatre studies – non-traditional A-level subjects predominantly offered by comprehensives, rather than private schools.

Of course when we’re selecting students for Physics programmes we request Physics and Mathematics A-level rather than Art and Design, simply because the latter do not provide an adequate preparation for what is quite a demanding course.  Other Schools no doubt make offers on a similar basis. It’s got nothing to do with  a bias against state schools, simply an attempt to select students who can cope with the course they have applied to do.

Moreover, speaking as a physicist I’d like to turn this whole thing around. Why is it that so many state schools do teach these subjects instead of  “traditional” subjects, including sciences such as physics?  Why is that so many comprehensive schools are allowed to operate as state-funded schools without offering adequate provision for science education? To my mind that’s a real, and far more insidious, form of blacklisting than what is alleged by the Guardian.

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Nerth gwlad ei gwybodaeth

Posted in Education, Opera, Politics with tags , , , , , , on July 15, 2010 by telescoper

Once again the wheel of academic life has turned full circle. A year to the day since I blogged about the last graduation ceremony for the School of Physics & Astronomy at Cardiff University, here I am doing it again. Last night Cardiff experienced some of the heaviest rainfall I’ve seen for ages and I got a bit soggy on the way to St David’s Hall for this morning’s ceremony. Given that today is St Swithin’s Day this doesn’t bode well for the rest of the summer…

I confess it didn’t feel too comfortable sitting there on stage under the lights in a slightly damp suit, wearing a tie, and sporting mortarboard and gown but it went pretty well. Three Schools went through during the ceremony I attended: Earth & Ocean Sciences and Psychology as well as Physics & Astronomy.

We had by far the smallest group of graduands; the School of Psychology is particularly huge and is also notable for having such a small percentage of male graduates. In Physics & Astronomy we have about 20% female students whereas Psychology must be >95%. We often sit around at tea-time discussing how to persuade more girls to study Physics, but I wonder if anyone frets about how to get more boys to do Psychology?

It’s a very proud moment when the students you know receive their degrees. This year, in fact, produced the first set of BSc graduates that have completed their entire study period while I’ve been here since I only arrived three years ago.

It must be a nerve-wracking experience crossing the stage at St David’s Hall in front of your family and friends, especially in high heels as most of the girls did. I would have thought sensible shoes were a wiser option, but then what do I know?

If you want to see the ceremony you can do so by following this link. I’m in the front row on stage, to the right hand side, dressed in a blue gown and mortarboard but not visible on the cross-stage view.

The Honorary Fellowship presented during our ceremony was received by Professor Paul Harris, a distinguished psychologist. It’s worth mentioning that another such event earlier in the week saw the award of an Honorary Fellowship to Stephen Fry who has been involved in studies of bipolar disorder at the University. He tweeted regularly during his short visit to Cardiff, e.g.

Must say Cardiff is looking spankingly good in the late afternoon sunshine. Castle is gleaming, Town Hall glowing. Much to like here.

I’m sure the university press machine will make as much as they can of his comments. And why not? Cardiff does indeed have much to like. Even in the rain.

The ceremony ended on a high note or, in fact, on several.  Mary-Jean O’Doherty, a wonderful young Soprano from the Cardiff International Academy of Voice, gave us a fine rendition of the Queen of the Night’s  Act II aria from Mozart’s The Magic Flute. Die Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen is a tremendously difficult coloratura piece featuring a barrage of stratospheric high notes. I thought it was tremendously brave to take that on, coming into it completely cold, but she did it fantastically well and it fair brought the house down. I note that the opera from which this aria was taken is featured in Welsh National Opera’s forthcoming autumn season, where it is sure to prove popular.

I’m pretty sure not many people in the audience knew the Opera or could understand German, however, because although the music is wonderful the lyrics aren’t entirely appropriate. The first line translates as “The Rage of Hell is boiling in my heart….”. Perhaps that was a subliminal response to the fact that the  Cardiff International Academy of Voice is closing later this year.

Anyway it was then back to the School for a lunch party – which was very nicely done, I think – and a speech of farewell from the Head of School ending with the award of prizes for students who had performed exceptionally well in their studies. I’m fortunate that the prize-winning student of the MPhys (4-year) cohort is staying on in Cardiff to do a PhD under my supervision.

Just in case any of the new graduates are reading this, let me add my congratulations to those of the Head of School and also repeat his encouragement to you to stay in touch. It’s always a delight when former students drop in for a chat, but if you can’t do that please do keep in touch on Facebook or the like.

I know the graduate job market is tough at the moment, but don’t be discouraged if you haven’t got anything sorted out yet. In the long run what you’ve learned will benefit you.  I’m sure I speak on behalf of everyone who has had the pleasure of teaching you over the last three or four years when I say that we wish you all the very best in your future careers.

PS. The title of this post in in Welsh. It translates as “A nation’s strength is in its learning”.

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