As the UK Government's autumn CSR (Comprehensive Spending Review) approaches, the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) has entered the recent debate over research and development funding, via a letter sent to Prof. Adrian Smith of the department for Business Innovation and Skills. In the letter, RSC chief executive Richard Pike has pointed to a quartet of messages of extreme importance to ensure a sound R&D community for Britain in the future to keep the country competitive and innovative.
From the standpoint of the RSC, the four principal messages which it would wish to convey address the total level of government funding for R&D, funding of teaching in universities, the effectiveness of scientific decision-making within government, and the desirability of independent advice to improve scientific and economic outcomes for the benefit of the country.
Current governmental funding of 1.7 percent of GDP places UK at 14th in a recent comparative assessment, says RSC. Further decline risks opening a wider gap between UK and its major industrial competitors such as Japan, US, South Korea, Germany and France. Although China, at about 1.4 percent of GDP, is less than that for the UK, this proportion is increasing rapidly over time and in absolute terms far exceeds all other countries, with the exception of Japan and the US, says RSC representatives. Within the chemistry sector, the RSC expects China to overtake the US next year to become the largest source of scientific papers published in the world.
In the report "Follow-up Study of the Finances of Chemistry and Physics Departments in UK Universities", a sample of 11 chemistry departments showed that all were in deficit on research activity during the period 2007-08, largely because the overhead element of grants was still short of full economic costing (FEC). The very significant contribution of the chemical sciences to the country's economy is to be summarised in a report by Oxford Economics entitled, "The economic benefits of chemistry research to the UK", which will be launched later this year.
The financial position of teaching in chemistry at university over the same period 2007-08 in the above report showed significant improvement because of increased tuition fees from home undergraduates and additional funding from HEFCE for strategically important and expensive laboratory-based subjects. Even so, most of the departments in the study were operating with a teaching deficit approaching 10 percent. Moreover, the future situation is likely to deteriorate because of the downturn on public expenditure, upward pressure on staff costs and the decline in 17-18 year olds during the period 2010-2019. According to RSC, given the contribution of the chemistry and chemistry-dependent industries to the UK economy, it is essential to develop a long term vision for the chemical sciences in higher education, with chemistry-related science available to undergraduates at all universities, in order to maintain and further develop the science base within the UK.
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