UK chemistry provision under scrutiny
How many Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in the UK offer courses with ‘chemistry’ in the title and provide a breadth of study across the entire discipline? How many offer the chemical sciences as the main constituent but have specialist objectives, such as medicinal chemistry or chemistry with management studies? How many of these courses offer students the opportunity to study in industry or abroad? And how is such provision distributed across England? Do ‘regional deserts’ of chemistry provision really exist? To what extent would, for example, an increase in the number of forensic science courses make up for any drop in the number of chemistry courses in the country? The answers to these questions form the basis of the Royal Society of Chemistry’s (RSC) response to an inquiry, launched in March, by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) into the provision of strategically important subjects in England. Chaired by Professor Sir Gareth Roberts (University of Oxford), the group is due to report this month.
The ‘Roberts’ inquiry
Broadly, Roberts is expected to advise on how the Government can identify subjects that are particularly important to the UK’s political and economic policies yet are vulnerable. The nature of support required by such subjects – including eg teaching, research, actions to influence student and user demand, and possible collaborations with regional development agencies (RDAs) and research councils (RCs) to address funding issues – are on Roberts’ agenda. The implications of a national strategy for dealing with such issues, which take account of developments across the European HE system, will be considered, and the Roberts’ group is expected to give HEFCE some idea of what more information it needs to underpin its approach to funding such departments in the longer term.
The RSC feeds into inquiry
According to the RSC, research-orientated departments offering full-time courses intended to produce future researchers now dominate undergraduate provision of chemistry in England. Of the 46 HEIs in England offering courses with ‘chemistry’ in the title, 24 offer MChems, predominantly in 5/5* departments (17 departments, plus two in Scotland) with the remaining seven in ‘strong’ 4-rated departments (plus four outside England). While there is good demand for places in most of these 4-rated departments, the RSC says, there is an increasing tendency towards HEIs concentrating resources in 5/5* subjects, leading to concerns over the chemistry provision in these departments. There are six ‘less research strong’ chemistry departments rated 3a/3b (plus three outside England), and 16 additional HEIs that offer chemistry at undergraduate level, some of which entered its research under different RAE cost centres, such as materials and medicine-related subjects. With the availability of HNC/HND chemistry now scarce, progression on to degree-level programmes via this route is now rare, and just three universities in England offer foundation degrees in areas related to chemistry.
In short, the RSC finds that ‘local access to chemistry is already severely restricted in some regions, and in most areas a further loss of provision would mean that students would have to travel considerable distances’. There is no mainstream provision of chemistry, the RSC says, west of Bristol, north of Manchester in NW England, in Kent, or between Reading and the east coast up to 80 miles north of London, with the exception of Cambridge. Further, the pattern of provision across England, both geographically and across the research spectrum, is poorly matched to the location or type of chemistry-based employment.
Dr Tony Ashmore, registrar at the RSC told Education in Chemistry, ‘More than 90 per cent of students with A-level chemistry go on to study for some type of degree, so there’s very little untapped market of traditional
students for part-time courses, or the
employment needs of industry outside R&D. With now really only the Open University
providing provision outside the traditional route, ie for distance learning, there’s very little provision that is designed for access to chemistry for non-A-level students’.
According to the RSC, there is ‘little scope for further "rationalisation" without further loss of provision for significant populations’. Ashmore explains, ‘The RSC is pushing the Government for a national and regional strategy for allocating public funds to support strategically important subjects and a regional plan would be better than no plan. But we have concerns about the role of RDAs. We don’t know, for example, how long they are likely to last, and whether funding from RDAs would be month to month, or year to year, which isn’t a sound basis for a national strategy. And any rationalisation into just two types of programmes – ie academic and vocational – wouldn’t bode well for chemistry, it’s just not that clear cut. For example, an MChem provision in a research-intensive university may be regarded by the pharmaceutical industry as vocational because it will prepare students for a research career and may even have an industrial placement’.
In the final analysis, the RSC wants to see a national strategy that provides a spectrum of provision, from foundation degrees, through three- and four-year BSc/MChem, some with industrial placements, some with substantial research projects, and a variety of subject emphases, eg analytical, biological etc to meet the nation’s strategic needs.
Kathryn Roberts
