APPENDIX V. Extract from Anniversary Address 30 November 1979
Reprinted from Proc. R. Soc. Lond. A. 369, 299-306 (1980)
To me at least one of the most interesting features of the Report of Council is the evidence it provides of the Society's increasing concern with major problems and issues of the day where the provision of objective scientific evidence as a basis for political decision is necessary. Especially is it necessary in those matters where facts tend to be ignored or distorted by groups (often quite small) of ideologically motivated fanatics, or perhaps unintentionally by news reporters under the twin pressures of meeting a deadline and producing something which is at once brief and arresting. I had occasion last year to mention one such topic - recombinant DNA research. In this year's Report you will see that three new Royal Society Study Groups have been established: one on Assessment and Perception of Risks (Chairman, Sir Frederick Warner), a second on Safety in Research (Chairman, Sir Ewart Jones) and a third on The Nitrogen Cycle (Chairman, Professor W. D. P. Stewart). In addition a Joint Working Party on Biotechnology (i.e. the application of biological organisms, processes, and systems to industry) has been set up with the Advisory Council for Applied Research and Development (A.CA.R.D.) and the Advisory Board for the Research Councils (A.B.R.C.) under the chairmanship of Dr A. Spinks. I would also draw your attention to the ad hoc group which under the chairmanship of the Physical Secretary is preparing a submission to the government's Commission on Energy and the Environment on the whole problem of coal and its future in the economy. The group is studying the available evidence on reserve identification and extraction, transport, and handling of coal as well as environmental effects, conversion and utilisation techniques and effluent problems; many of these important issues tend to be glossed over or ignored in public statements about a future (and hypothetical) 'coal economy'. Yet another ad hoc group under the chairmanship of Dr G. B. R. Feilden is considering afresh the interface between industry and the academic world and the role which the Society might play in the future development of the Industrial Research Associations. You will notice also the substantial number of Discussion Meetings that have been held. These meetings, which have been a feature of recent years, fulfil an important function. Not only are many of them interdisciplinary in their coverage but they can serve as a mechanism for focusing public attention on certain problems or matters of technical debate. It is my hope that our activities in these directions, including the preparation of reports on important national issues and responsible discussion of the problems involved - whether on our own initiative or at the request of government - will continue and expand. For, more than ever before, our daily existence is dependent on advances in science-based technology and our future depends more than many people seem to realise upon the use we make of the new technologies which will develop on the basis of today's discoveries in science. Failure to choose wisely among the various choices open to us, or, even worse, to ignore them in the vain hope of continuing to operate antiquated technologies successfully in the competitive arena of world trade spells disaster for any industrialised country. Yet this is what we have been doing in Britain in recent years although the extent of our economic decline is currently hidden from an unthinking public by the fortuitous (but temporary) inflow of wealth from the North Sea oilfields. Time was when the area of choice open to governments in the formulation of national policy was limited and the factors governing choice comparatively straightforward and simple to understand. But that time has long since gone. The development of science-based technology that followed on the heels of the industrial revolution continues to gather force and there is no way in which it can be halted. Human society cannot escape the consequences of new knowledge which will emerge from science in the future and, as the rate of accretion increases, so too will the complexity of choice and the number of options open to governments whatever their political colour. In a democracy like ours scientific expertise among politicians is hardly common and today governments are bombarded from all sides with a babel of advice from pressure groups, much of it misinformed or heavily biased. It is not my purpose today to argue in detail the mechanisms by which the need for external and independent advice should be met, but it seems to me that the Royal Society is a body uniquely constituted to organise the provision of that advice. I believe that this is an area in which the Society should be more active than it has been in recent times, and the setting up and further development of the study groups and discussions mentioned in the Report is an earnest of that belief.
Future developments in science and technology cannot be predicted; none of us can foresee the discoveries which will be made or the technologies to which they will give rise. All we can say - and that with some certainty - is that they will surprise us. But what we do know from the recent history of our own country is that the survival of a great nation and the standard of living enjoyed by its citizens depend on their ability and readiness to be in the forefront of new technologies as they emerge. And the best way of doing this is to be master of the science on which these technologies rest. In other words those countries will be the most successful which make discoveries in science and then exploit them through technology. Our record in discovery is good but during this century our performance in the highly competitive area of technological innovation has been, to say the least, disappointing. To recover the economic ground we have lost as a result will demand a greatly enhanced effort (and perhaps also a change of heart) on the part of our people. But any recovery - and we have the opportunity for one now through nature's gift of North Sea oil - will be of short duration if we cut back on our scientific research for financial or other reasons without considering the effect our economies may have on our future stock of scientists. There is, I fear, a good deal of evidence to suggest that we may even now be mortgaging our future in this respect.
During the past year the Officers and Council of the Society have been much involved in efforts to promote the development of research groups around promising research scientists. Such activity was foreshadowed in remarks I made in my Anniversary Address in 1977 and I am glad to say that we are now making progress. Although the amount of money available to us is small in relation to the overall need we hope the contribution we can make will not be wholly insignificant and may have the effect of encouraging other bodies to promote first-class research and raise the morale of those who are capable of doing it. For morale is still low in our universities and especially so among the younger members of the academic research community. The evidence for this is circumstantial and perhaps to some extent subjective but I believe the decline has now reached a point at which not only urgent consideration but also action is called for if not only our research but our whole university system is not to suffer permanent damage.
It is common to put the blame for this on the stagnation of the British economy and the consequent shortage of money for education and research. Our economic difficulties certainly play a large part but I believe the real root of the trouble lies in the misguided euphoria which in the early sixties caused us - in common with most other industrialised countries - approximately to double the number of our universities and greatly to expand our student numbers. No one would seriously dispute the thesis that higher education (tertiary education would perhaps be a better expression) should be available to all those able to benefit from it, but in those heady days higher education was equated with university education of the traditional pattern. How wrong this was has been amply demonstrated by subsequent events. The sudden expansion in student numbers involving as it did the entry of many with no real motivation for the type of education provided by our traditional universities (and which was, by and large, adopted by all the new ones) was in my view a material factor in the disturbances which marked the late sixties and early seventies. The universities survived the shock of these student disturbances surprisingly well but the long-term effects of the sudden and prodigious expansion of higher education are now becoming in
creasingly apparent. They are, in fact, basically demographic although in many respects exaggerated by our nation's economic decline.
The rapid growth of the university system in the 1960s brought about a vast expansion in tenured staff usually by the recruitment of relatively young men and women taken from the normal supply of university graduates and not invariably of the highest quality. Many, if not most, of these remain today at the same institutions and are likely to do so for perhaps another two decades under the tenure system which is almost universal. This phenomenon is, of course, not confined to the United Kingdom and it is giving increasing concern in most other industrialised countries, including the United States. The secretariat of the European Science Foundation has tried to collect and analyse such statistical material on university staffing as is available for a number of European countries (United Kingdom, West Germany, France, Denmark, Norway and Switzerland) and has published its findings in the Report of the Foundation for 1978. The results are strikingly similar for all the countries examined. Broadly speaking, they indicate that in most European countries the age distribution of teaching staff in universities is now at a level where 50%, or in some of them as much as 60% of the staff has an average age of about forty. The figures show, too, that in the countries examined in more detail (i.e. those listed above) the majority of those in post today will remain in office until the mid-1990s, when they will begin to reach retirement age. The demand for replacements during the next fifteen years or so will be exceedingly low and the effect could well be exaggerated if economic difficulties cause universities to economize by the short-sighted policy of suppressing posts that become vacant (this has, indeed, already occurred). The overall result both on research and teaching could be disastrous and persist for many years.
A detailed study of chemistry departments in British universities has been made by Professor Colin Eaborn who summarised his findings thus:
At present only 7.8% of the staff of chemistry departments are below 35 years of age; the proportion will probably fall to about 4% in five years' time and rise to only about 9 % in ten years time. The proportion below 40 years of age, now 26% will fall to about 12.5% in five years and to about 10% in ten years time. During those ten years the proportion of staff over 50 will rise from the present 28% to about 62%. These figures have serious implications for British chemistry, and thus for the chemical and other science-based industries.
Indeed they have - and the situation in other physical sciences is unlikely to differ greatly. Viewing Europe as a whole, the European Science Foundation suggests that the chance for a junior research assistant to reach a permanent university appointment has gone down from about 70% during the 1960s to about 15% in this decade. The outlook is indeed bleak, faced as we are with a continued ageing of university staffs over nearly two decades and a denial to departments of the invigoration which younger recruits can bring to them. The other side of the coin is that younger scientists who would in previous decades have made a solid contribution to research in an academic environment will now be denied that opportunity and either abandon research or seek a career elsewhere. Surprising though it may seem, the academic research profession has within a few years been transformed from one of the most mobile to one of the most static. This is particularly so in the United Kingdom, where the economic stagnation of recent years has all but staunched the flow of academics in mid-career into other occupations. Many young scientists are seeking to retain their present precarious positions by hand-to-mouth grants because they fear that a change to another university or research institute might jeopardise their chance of obtaining a permanent appointment. This same attitude is probably responsible for the falling-off in applications received by the Society for fellowships under the European Exchange Scheme. To many, it would seem, the risk of losing a small chance which may exist at home seems too great for all but the most venturesome to follow the path of their predecessors, who normally received some part of their training abroad. In such circumstances it may well be that the diminishing chance of obtaining a university position could lead to a kind of negative selection process among those who stay at home, and in any case it militates against international scientific cooperation and understanding.
To these essentially demographic problems affecting our outlook in research others associated more directly with inflation and economic recession could be added. One only will I mention here; in the past, universities and research institutions spent something like 65% of their budget on staff and 35% on maintenance, including such things as research and library expenditures. As a result of inflation the proportion being spent on salaries and wages has been increasing and this has in many cases been reflected in a shortfall in research budgets, which has had to be met by increasing the demand on Research Council funds. How long such difficulties as these will persist it is impossible to say - they are likely to be with us until we emerge from the economic morass in which we are floundering. In these circumstances it is all the more necessary that the universities and those responsible for sponsoring the university system should grasp - and more courageously than they have been doing - the nettles which now abound, many but not all of them a consequence of underlying demographic problems. Several awkward, even painful, questions arise.
Is it, for example, to continue to be taken as an article of faith that all established academics are capable of first-class research and that all students obtaining first- or upper-second-class honours degrees should be encouraged and provided with the wherewithal to pursue academic research? The answer to both questions must, I fear, be no. Earlier in this address I indicated my view that the very rapid expansion of university staffs which has occurred was bound to involve some who were not of first-class research calibre. Moreover, we have seen in the past decade or so an approximate doubling of student numbers in our universities, the increase being drawn very largely from the same social classes of our population as in the past. Despite this the proportion of first-class honours degrees awarded each year in science at least has not diminished; it is difficult not to equate this with a lowering of standards. If these doubts are justified and we continue to believe that each department in every one of our present universities should have a substantial research school the strain on our financial resources may become intolerable. The resulting decline in the standard of our research will in due course extend through to our technology and so militate against the nation's economic recovery. Yet this is the road down which we appear to be travelling owing to over-rapid expansion and the inflexibility of our university employment patterns. The dual support system of the University Grants Committee and the Research Councils would ideally ensure that extra funds for the support of research were concentrated on those most likely to spend them well; as things now stand, however, while there is no reason to believe that really able young scientists with good projects to put forward will be denied temporary funding to initiate them, the prospects of their being given a sufficient measure of permanence to build up a centre of excellence in their institution is small indeed. Since in research only excellence begets excellence it is essential that universities individually or collectively should face up to this problem.
But can all university departments or even all universities really become centres of excellence? This question (and the inevitably disappointing answer to it) has been lurking in the minds of British academic scientists for the past decade but has not been openly faced. In reality, however, it is not possible - and it may not even be desirable - that all departments of, say, chemistry or physiology should stand out for the high quality of their research in some corner (and still less in all corners) of their discipline. Some, for example, have too small a staff adequately to sustain undergraduate teaching and to supervise at the same time programmes of postgraduate work which all departments in all disciplines appear to regard as the essential breath of life. Need this requirement for large postgraduate programmes be universal? It is a remarkable fact that in proportion to popul
ation there are more institutions awarding Ph.Ds in physics in Britain than in the United States. In the United States we find many more institutions devoted to professional education and applied sciences and there are many distinguished universities whose reputation rests substantially on the quality of their basic teaching.
A Time to Remember Page 28
