Here, Rupert Raby asks whether science really is in crisis, as we have been led to believe and if so, what hope is there for the future?
Some would say science has been in a downward spiral for years but the problem seems to be coming to a head. In March 2006, the same month that hosted National Science Week, Sussex University announced plans to shut down its chemistry department. To date, the department has produced three Nobel laureates. Sussex joins a list of UK Universities who have closed their science departments in recent years – is this just an economic reality or another nail in the coffin for science?
John Cridland, deputy director-general of the CBI (confederation of British Industry), said recently: “We're going to wake up one morning and find that it's overseas countries that have this very important cluster of science skills and we don't. The decline in science study isn't yet a crisis but it will haunt us unless we address it now.” The wider implication is that it’s not just children’s education that is at risk but that the UK could fall behind in maintaining a long history of scientific endeavour and all that it creates: jobs, investment and medical breakthroughs. The consequences could be severe for all of us.
A Golden Age of Science
How has it come to this? In the 50’s, science was still seen as glamorous and exciting. It was an era when British scientists built the first nuclear power station; unlocked the secrets of DNA and won eight Nobel Prizes. Today, only half the number of students now go on to study the sciences at ‘A’ Level. Science, it seems, is no longer sexy.
Back then, Science didn’t suffer from negative image problems – it was a golden age for the ‘white coated hero’. Boys, especially, sought to expand their knowledge in an era of scientific and technological endeavour.
According to Mike Ashburner, professor of Genetics at Cambridge University, his interest in science was sparked by a different factors. It was partly the environment he grew up in that helped spark his fascination: “like many biologists of my generation I got into science through natural history, inspired by my father when I was growing up on the South Downs in Sussex. But I was also inspired by what appeared (then) to be extraordinary promise of science such as the 1950's Atoms for Peace drive and all that went with it.”