Future National Research Policies Within the Industrialized Nations Report of a Symposium (1992) / Chapter Skim
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United Kingdom
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Pages 44-62
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From page 44... ...
. Figures collected by the OECD suggest that this is a proportionately smaller sum than the shares of national wealth devoted to R&D in Japan, the United States, Germany, and France.
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From page 45... ...
As well as being part of the government's general intention of removing what it saw as the featherbedding of parts of British industry, this policy was also intended to allow some redirection of funds to the science base. By "science base" I mean the basic and strategic research funded by government in our universities and Research Council institutes.
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From page 46... ...
Science Base Spending Figure 2 shows how our science base spending breaks down among funding agencies and it illustrates very well the dual-support system that is at the heart of ourfunding arrangements. About half of the government's support for academic research flows in unhypothecated grants through the Universities Funding Council (UFC)
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From page 47... ...
The ABRC then advises on how these total resources should be allocated among the Research Councils, looking again at the Forward Look plans they submitted earlier in the year. (I have emphasized this process because I believe that we must all learn how to manage research within steady or only slowly growing resources, in which new programs will increasingly require the discontinua tion of old ones.)
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From page 48... ...
We also need means for ensuring effective and ready communication among the Research Councils and the higher education Funding Councils, the UFC and PCFC. I have to confess that this is not working well at present.
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From page 49... ...
Each of the modes has it strengths and its weaknesses. Research institutes have the capacity to concentrate effort in identified fields, to organize continuing programs of research in those fields, to focus on the relevance of research to applications, and to mobilize scientists across a range of disciplines.
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From page 50... ...
A second aspect of selectivity about which I feel strongly is that our decisions about subject fields should not be irrevocable. We must retain some limited capacity in all fields, if only to understand properly what the research leaders elsewhere are achieving, and we must retain the flexibility both to shift resources from our selected fields into others in the light of scientific advances and to take account of inevitable changes in U.K.
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From page 51... ...
The U.K. policy agenda for the 1990s therefore also has to include questions about the following: first, the extent to which we should recognize more overtly institutional differentiation in research functions and the implications of that for funding arrangements, and, second, the extent to which we should proactively be encouraging relocation of particular research activities and interests between the "top 20" research universities.
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From page 52... ...
Few single countries can afford the investments required to produce ever-bigger particle accelerators or more sophisticated radiation sources, and increasing attention is being given to global concerns, such as climate change, which inherently require multinational inputs. Thus, an increasing proportion of our research budgets is likely to be directed to international activities.
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From page 53... ...
If future governments made a policy decision of that kind, we might have a significant improvement in U.K. science over the next decade.
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From page 54... ...
This is a major change in the staffing of universities, which is to a great extent a consequence of the diversification of sources, for the outside sources tend to be on a shorter time scale. This increase in short-term contract staff has both plus and minus factors.
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From page 55... ...
The consequence of this is certainly major tension, particularly in the United Kingdom concerning the resources that can be spent on international collaboration of this kind and the resources that are spent inside the United Kingdom itself. The United Kingdom is perhaps different Tom other countries in Europe in that the money for these international subscriptions comes out of the same overall financial budget as the direct support of science in the United Kingdom.
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From page 56... ...
~ ~11~ previous government held, and it still appears to be part of the present government policy: to reduce the public sects r ~:rn~nAit,~r~ in ct~:~r~r~] OVA ; particular for science.
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From page 57... ...
Those are the responsibilities of the scientific community, and they should not be handed over to the government. Because there is no plan for science, as far as I can see, in government circles, the Royal Society decided recently to undertake what one might think of as a plan of its own.
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From page 58... ...
The most pressing need is to ensure in science that we recruit and bring into the scientific community able people of the next generation, and that we give them the right training and the right opportunities to conduct their future careers, whether those be inside universities in _ _ _ 1 . ~ researcn centers, or out In Industry.
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From page 59... ...
I do not make that an argument for cutting funds, but if you do have to cut funds, then you are forced to think about certain fundamental issues. The general view, I believe, in the Royal Society is that really fundamental progress in science comes from the individual scientists the cutting edge and that science funding should recognize this and should respond by providing funds for key scientists.
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From page 60... ...
Perhaps we will move more toward the kind of system that exists in the United States, with a wide range of institutions of higher education from very prestigious universities conducting a great deal of high-grade research to other universities that perform a wider range of ncti`riti~c Because of the political movement in Europe and the uncle diversity of structures in different countnes, ~ think it is inevitable that we unit have some kind of convergence of the different systems in Europe. c, ~ a,, ~ _ v ~ At the same time, I think there will be a need to converge in Europe.
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From page 61... ...
Sir Michael Atiyah: First of all, one has to recognize a little bit of history in this. The problem with British universities was that there was every, very rapid expansion of the system in the 1 960s, which led to an enormous influx of new faculty.
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From page 62... ...
Atiyah, you mentioned that work at interdisciplinary centers is often mediocre. That might often be true, but can one not also look at it as evidence that the scientific community has lost the ability to communicate across disciplines and that they have specialized so much that these mediocre studies reflect merely bad communications?
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