"In the past decade 19 physics departments have merged or closed.
Now a threat hangs over another of the 47 remaining departments, after the University of Reading's senior management board proposed that its 33-strong department of physics recruits no more students and closes no later than July 2010. A final decision will be made in November. "
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/09/30/nphysics30.xml"Another university to drop physics
By Roger Highfield, Science Editor
(Filed: 30/09/2006)
Scientists mourned the proposed closure of another physics department yesterday and complained that higher education is now being shaped by the choices of teenagers and not by government or the needs of the economy.
In the past decade 19 physics departments have merged or closed.
Now a threat hangs over another of the 47 remaining departments, after the University of Reading's senior management board proposed that its 33-strong department of physics recruits no more students and closes no later than July 2010. A final decision will be made in November.
Peter Main, the science director of the Institute of Physics, said: "University vice-chancellors are operating in an environment that is controlled by the choices of 17-year-old students.
"Funding follows student numbers and so the future of Britain's science base rests on the university choices of sixth-formers. This is a clear example of market failure.
"The Government has to realise that its aspirations for science will not happen unless they look again at how university departments are funded; the current model disadvantages laboratory-based subjects, especially physics."
Earlier this year the Commons science and technology committee said there was a "fundamental disconnect" between the Government's desire to preserve core undergraduate physics, chemistry, technology, engineering and mathematics and its desire to preserve the autonomy of universities.
The latest closure was announced only days after a new partnership of learned societies, teachers and science organisations said the next generation of scientists could be lost without urgent, concerted action to improve the state of science education.
The Science Community Partnership Supporting Education (Score) was launched by the Royal Society to tackle the crisis in A-level physics and the "unacceptable shortages" of physics and chemistry teachers.
"We have a window of opportunity in the next five years to ensure that we stem the decline in the sciences," said Prof Martin Taylor, the vice-president of the society. " "
