Date published: 2006/05/04
The BBC says:
The future of university science is under threat, with the authorities lacking the "teeth" to save courses, a report by MPs says.
The science and technology select committee called Sussex University's proposal to close its highly rated chemistry department "disappointing".
Until stronger national guidelines were in place, further such closures were "inevitable", it added.
But Sussex University called the report "partisan and contradictory".
The MPs found declining interest in chemistry was "without doubt a national concern".
The government had failed to give the Higher Education Funding Council for England (Hefce) enough "powers or political support", but had encouraged a "market", within which vice-chancellors were very powerful.
This had left Hefce with neither "the teeth, the tools, nor the will" to do its job effectively.
The report said: "It is extremely unfortunate that in an area of higher education so crucial to the nation's future industrial strength there is now an acknowledged policy failure."
Treasury figures show the number of students graduating in chemistry fell by 7% between 2003 and 2005.
...
Sussex wants to replace its chemistry department with one offering "chemical biology" in 2007.
This is what happens when the bean counters run universities, and unfortunately government after government has given more and more power to the bean counters. But the move by Sussex towards biology is natural, since biology is where most of the action and money is these days. In Cambridge even the Faculty of Mathematics has jumped onto the biology bandwagon, along with both Chemistry and Physics. Biology (well, molecular biology) is as important now as physics was in 1945.
_________________________________________________________
All material not included from other sources is copyright cambridge2000.com.
For further information or questions email: info [at] cambridge2000 [dot] com
(replace "[at]" with "@" and "[dot]" with ".").