WELCOME ANNOUNCEMENTS, BUT CENTRAL CONTROL MUST BE CURTAILED IMMEDIATELY

SBS today welcomed some of the measures in the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s pre-Budget report, but warned that the short-term crisis in university science needs the Government to make immediate changes to the ways it interferes in universities’ flexibility to use their resources widely. “It was heartening to hear the Chancellor mention the importance of science in his first sentence,” said Dr Peter Cotgreave, Director of SBS, “and to hear him talk of scientific genius and world-class universities as British strengths.

“But we have seen in the last week that, chemistry departments are closing around the country. Despite new money, universities are struggling, and the reason is that central interference hampers the benefits of Gordon Brown’s financial investment.

“We support the Chancellor’s strategy, reiterated in his speech today, of increasing university endowments, because that will give them unencumbered funds to use as they see fit.

“But that is a long-term aim, and this week’s news has shown that there is a crisis in some areas NOW.

“The reason for that crisis is not just that the need for more money, although new money is always welcome. The problem is that quangos like the Higher Education Funding Council come up with crackpot measures that create utterly unnecessary problems. For example, until this year, universities got twice as much money for each science student as for each arts or humanities student. Then this year, the Funding Council reduced the ratio, so that universities now only receive 1.7 times as much funding for science students as they do for arts students.

“The universities get no less money overall, but a smaller proportion of it is nominally allocated to science. So when the Vice Chancellor looks at the accounts at the end of the year, it seems as if the chemistry department is losing money, even though nothing has actually changed on the ground.

“On industrial R&D, we called last week for the rules to be changed on the taxation of spin-out companies, and for the Chancellor to announce more details about how his tax credits are working, and we’re pleased he has announced both of those today”.

ENDS

For further information, please contact Peter Cotgreave on 020 7679 4995, or 07958 570 591