I’ve always had a soft spot for Sussex University. When I was an undergraduate and a beginning cosmologist at Cambridge, Sussex had (and continues to have) one of the country’s best cosmology groups, and its members would always give some of the most interesting talks at the U.K. Cosmology Meetings. As a graduate student, postdoc and faculty member in the U.S., I have had a great time visiting Sussex and I have been involved in successful collaborations with several people there. Furthermore, my last Ph.D. student is now a postdoc there.
I have therefore followed with interest the plans to close its Nobel Prize winner-producing and 5-ranked (almost the top grade in the U.K.) chemistry department. It is unthinkable to me that an excellent university like Sussex could contemplate running without a chemistry department, but this is precisely what was proposed by the vice-chancellor. I don’t see how one can claim to have a proper science curriculum, or claim to be an institution that takes science seriously while casting aside one of the pillars of modern scientific knowledge.
So I am delighted to read in The Guardian that a final decision has been made to keep Sussex chemistry, and in fact to strengthen it.
At an extraordinary university council meeting today, members voted to adopt a recommendation from the vice-chancellor, Alasdair Smith, which will see the respected chemistry department retained and expanded to include biochemistry.
Prof Smith had wanted to scrap chemistry and merge it with biology, but his proposal was widely condemned by academics, the Royal Society and the House of Commons science and technology select committee.
The professor maintained that dwindling student numbers had made the chemistry department unviable in its present form, but the head of chemistry, Gerry Lawless, and the Commons committee, which held an emergency hearing into the university’s plans, rejected Prof Smith’s claims.
The article contains the scraps of what must have been some fairly furious academic infighting, with interesting doublespeak like
Earlier this month, the Commons committee described the proposal to close the department as “seriously flawed” and said the decision was handled “particularly ineptly”.
The committee’s highly critical report also accused the Sussex vice-chancellor of failing to make any attempt to save chemistry.
juxtaposed with
Prof Smith, said: “I have always made clear that I hoped the outcome of the process will be to secure a strong future for chemistry at Sussex, as part of the range of excellent academic activities in our school of life sciences.”
But whatever the history, this seems like an excellent outcome for a good institution. Congratulations Sussex!
May 15th, 2006 at 10:34 pm
I have likewise enjoyed the hospitality of the Sussex group — and was similarly floored with the news that the powers that be there thought they could mange without a chemistry department.
As it happens, I was recently talking to someone who had a faculty offer from Sussex (not in physics) and my immediate reaction was “You would feel safe at a place willing to do *that* to its chemistry department? What if your department is up for the chop five years from now?”
Sadly, it looks as though they have won the fight, but this brings no credit to the institution.
May 16th, 2006 at 12:35 am
What isn’t in the news is the way the good particle theory group (which had a significant cosmology component) there has been allowed to break up. A few years ago there were several faculty, soon there will be none as people have left and not been replaced. This method may be quieter, but the end result is the same.
May 16th, 2006 at 6:28 am
Excelent news for Sussex, and to some extent for all science departments in the UK given the strong language of the Commons committee.
However, the war is not won until funding for departments is decoupled from student numbers. Perhaps creating hybrid government labs/universities is a solution? Of course, the chance of this is zero in the current UK (and European) climate of privatising everything.
May 16th, 2006 at 7:41 am
Mark, there are lots of universities without major departments in major sciences. My nearest university, Essex, had its physics department closed down and now only teaches post-graduate physics degrees within the department of electronics systems engineering: http://www2.essex.ac.uk/physics/
Hull University last year closed its maths department “because of falling interest among students.” - http://education.guardian.co.uk/universitiesincrisis/story/0,,1411320,00.html
Also, Exeter university closed its “loss-making” chemistry department last year, losing 130 staff and making chemistry becoming a branch of the bioscience department: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/4105961.stm see also http://www.exeter.ac.uk/chemweb/
Each year for the last decade, 2 % fewer students have taken physics A-level, so it isn’t surprising that there is a major issue. The key sciences chemistry, physics and maths are all becoming less popular in the UK. Electronics and biosciences are taking up the slack. Students are effectively voting with their UCAS
forms and sacking professors of pure core science subjects, at least in the provincial universities.
May 16th, 2006 at 7:44 am
Sorry, the fall in pre-university physics students in the UK is 4% per year now, not 2%. See http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/3580742.stm
May 16th, 2006 at 7:50 am
Whoops the latest report on the decline is Aug 2005: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/4162230.stm
“Entries in physics had decreased by 35.2% since 1991, while those in maths and chemistry had fallen by 21.5% and 12.6%, he added.”
May 16th, 2006 at 8:30 am
On Sussex, is their physics department safe?
On the issue of physics at A Level, I have some opinions about that, from my own experience:
The IOP physics A-Level course is pretty good (given the need to fit the absurd changes to the A/AS level qualifications, which lessened the value of each individual A Level) but, like Nuffield before it, has to struggle against falling numbers oh physics A Level students, hack exams like those of EDEXEL that promise better grades for less teacher expertise (because there really aren’t close to enough physics teachers in the UK) and the government’s changing moods. The lack of good physics teachers is, I think, the biggest problem of all.
Making physics compulsory in schools up to the age of 16 was only ever going to have considerable benefit if there were enough physics teachers. Many students learn their compulsory physics to GCSE from biologists or chemists who, while hardworking and well-meaning, don’t always have sufficient expertise to create very good lessons in physics. However, why on earth would anyone want to teach physics at UK schools? The alleged solidarity of the teaching profession means that no serious ’supply versus demand’ decisions can be made on teacher’s salaries; you can get a couple of inducement points to attract a physicist but, really, it’s not enough. No one can bear the idea of physics teachers earning 50-100% more than teachers of other disciplines where there is more competition amongst candidates (rather than competition amongst schools, which is the current situation when it comes to physics hires). However, the difference in ‘A’ Level take-up of physics achieved by having a very good teacher who really knows their physics is huge. The current policy of compulsory physics does mean that we do get a lot of kids at least familiar with physical ideas, who can wire a circuit or a plug, who can understand basic issues, but if we want a lot more physicists, we need better teachers and that means paying physics teachers a lot more for as long as there aren’t enough of them entering the profession. If that upsets English teachers and PE teachers and so on, they can weep their salty tears somewhere else, because there’s plenty of others to replace them.
May 16th, 2006 at 9:11 am
I don’t know the details of these cases so can’t comment. However, as you can see, when the Sussex case was looked at by a qualified panel and not an individual administrator, it was seen to be a poor decision.
May 16th, 2006 at 10:55 am
Can we blame Thatcher for this?
May 16th, 2006 at 1:01 pm
Thatcher’s government had a part to play in the ongoing sabotage of the British education system, although Blair’s lot have pulled ahead, I think.
Although Sussex’s department has been saved (it seems), falling numbers enrolling for those courses across the country are inevitably going to mean departments merging or shutting, if the educating aspect of the Department is dominant (of course, if it’s just about the research bucks, that’s different, but I’m not sure it works that way at UK universities so much). Shutting or merging some departments isn’t even a bad decision, although the matter of which ones suffer the knife is obviously a difficult one.
May 16th, 2006 at 2:26 pm
I did my BSc at Sussex (”Q”).
The physics department was effectively shut a few years ago when the School for Mathematics and Physical Sciences (MAPS) was abolished, and physics, math and astro were moved into Engineering - now renamed “School of Science and Technology”.
Similarly chemistry’s path to demise came when the old MOLS school was shut down and the chemistry department moved into Life Sciences.
The physics department had 33 faculty - 5 professors, 13 readers and 15 lecturers. Astronomy had 5 faculty, for a total of 38 tenure lines.
Current department has a total of 21 physics and astronomy tenure track people.
8 of which are in astronomy.
There are 12 faculty in mathematics now, there used to be 27 tenure track people.
Sussex used to be one of the few UK universities that offered a double honours Mathematical Physics BSc (MPhys now I guess). They apparently no longer do so. Nor is Mathematics with “minor” in Physics offered.
Bastards.
May 16th, 2006 at 5:13 pm
Hi Mark,
thanks for pointing out the news, it is great that at least Chemistry has been saved,
it would have been even greater if they could have saved the theoretical physics group…instead of triggering the diaspora of its faculties. I got my PhD at Sussex, it was a fantastic experience, the close interaction between the astronomy centre and the particle theory one created a really ideal environment for cosmology. I still remember with nostalgy the positive, friendly, joyful, creative atmosphere of the group. Now it is only a memory of the past.
Hope things will turn for better down there…
May 17th, 2006 at 7:00 am
As another ex-Sussex (PhD) student I’d like to comment on some of the comments….
Sussex has a rather odd Schools system where departments are grouped together in schools. Over the last decade or so physics has moved from MAPS (Mathematical and Physical Sciences) to CPES (Chemistry, Physics and Environmental Science) and more recently to SciTech (Science and Technology) [hopefully I’ve remembered the acronyms correctly]. From the point of view of students, in the sciences at least, these groupings have no real practical consequences. I’m sure that there are administrative and financial consequences (which as a student I was blissfully unaware of….), but it’s simply not true to say that “The physics department was effectively shut a few years ago”.
The loss of staff from the particle theory group over the last year or so is clearly a bad thing for the physics department and if the group were to die something very special would be lost. However, as far as I’m aware at least, the outcome is far from certain.
The science departments at Sussex are, along with those at many other UK universities, experiencing tough times. There are some excellent physicists at Sussex doing excellent science. Spreading mis-information and presenting speculation as fact is not going improve their position.
May 17th, 2006 at 7:51 am
Nicely put Anne. I was intending to add a comment clarifying my understanding of the extremely high quality of the parts of the Sussex physics department that I know. Whenever I travel to England, Sussex is one of the places I immediately think of being sure to visit.
May 17th, 2006 at 9:35 am
I had heard that undergrad enrollment for physics at Sussex is currently pretty (alarmingly) low. Is that the case, does anyone know?
May 17th, 2006 at 12:41 pm
Anne,
The reality is that the physics and mathematics faculty has been cut in half, many fewer degree options are being offered, enrollment is sharply down and one of Sussex’s attractions for undergrad - the broad range of minors and double degrees is mostly gone.
MAPS and MOLS schools were closed and amalgamated and re-amalgamated because they weren’t viable any longer as coherent units. Not enough students and shrinking faculty lines. Folding chemistry in with physics and then moving physics into engineering and chemistry into bio is not a good sign. For one thing the senior administration of the schools will have very different priorities from the departments, and there will be pressure to focus on service courses.
Looking at the faculty, Sussex seems to have lost solid state experimental groups and nuclear physics as well as particle physics. Cosmology has grown.
I don’t know why enrollment in physical sciences is down in US and western Europe, but it is real and damaging and the universities are reacting to it by retreating into “informatics” and psychology.
May 19th, 2006 at 8:56 am
Hey have you seen this
http://www.thes.co.uk/current_edition/story.aspx?story_id=2030031
with all the background to it here