2003:

Chemistry at King's under threat

A university college with a "distinguished history" in chemistry research may have to shut the department because of a falling number of students. King's College London says it can no longer afford to run the department in its present form.

Researchers at King's laid the foundations for the discovery of DNA 50 years ago.

In a statement, the college said the chemistry department was losing more than £1.25m a year.

A decision on the department's future would be made "in months rather than weeks", it said.

In the last 10 years accepted applications for chemistry first degrees had fallen by more than a quarter according to the Royal Society, the UK's leading scientific institution.

2004 (Guardian):

Chemists fear that there could be as few as six university chemistry departments left in 10 years' time.

Recent high profile closures of chemistry departments include that of King's College London's department which was credited as having developed crucial techniques which led to the discovery of DNA.

There are currently between 35 and 40 departments but the Royal Society of Chemistry is predicting that at best 20 will survive and at worst only six (those at Durham, Cambridge, Imperial, UCL, Bristol and Oxford) will remain in 2014.

Last week Swansea announced that it was closing its department as part of an extensive "restructuring" programme. Queen Mary's department is also under review.

Exeter:

THE FURORE SURROUNDING the University of Exeter’s announcement that they will close their chemistry department, with Nobel Prize winner Sir Harry Kroto handing back his honorary degree, has alerted people to the contraction in physical science departments across the UK. But this process has been gathering pace for a while.

Over the past 18 months King’s College London, Queen Mary College London and Swansea University have all decided to close their chemistry departments. This isn’t to do with student numbers. In fact, Exeter University had this year seen a 21 percent rise in undergraduate applications. The problem is the high cost of teaching undergraduates.

2005, from the RSC:

It is a great irony that at a time when chemistry and the use of chemical principles are to dominate human activities as never before that chemical education is sliding into obscurity. The last century has seen monumental developments in chemical techniques that allow us to visualize chemical phenomena with atomic level detail. Such clarity has provided the basis for breakthroughs in disciplines such as medicine where a molecular level understanding of a disease has the promise of leading to a total cure.

Chemistry education's predicament is perplexing. It is not clear how we have arrived at this situation. Also, we can't define a well-delineated set of problems that, if corrected, would re-install chemistry to its pre-eminent position among the sciences.

The demise of chemistry education seems to be a global problem but the symptoms have regional variations. In the UK, chemistry departments are closing. In Australia, there has been a rapid decline in the size of chemistry departments, with the number of staff (academic and technical) per department dropping precipitously. The difference between the two likely involves geographical factors...

2006:

First, from Nature Chemical Biology;

In early May, a decision will be made as to whether the University of Sussex will join five other UK institutions in eliminating their chemistry departments. The staffing of the chemistry department at Sussex has been shrinking at a rapid rate in the past decade as senior faculty members have left without being replaced. The current proposal by Vice Chancellor Alistair Smith is to close the chemistry department and merge it with biology, leaving 7 of the 14 current faculty members and eliminating the undergraduate chemistry program. This trimming leaves 7 researchers in the disciplines of organic chemistry and chemical biology; inorganic and physical chemistry will be nixed.

Sussex University is to follow QMUL, Kings and Dundee by closing its Chemistry department, instead focusing on biosciences.

Education Guardian that the loss-making Chemistry department at Sussex University, which attracts only 20 students a year, will be renamed "chemical biology" and lose half of its chemistry academics. Straight chemisty degrees will no longer be offered, with the University focusing on biosciences instead. Current students will be able to complete their degrees.

Physics in Reading:

The Institute of Physics announced its regret at the decision of the University of Reading to close its Physics Department. The Institute of Physics science director, Peter Main said, on learning of the impending closure of the 33-strong department, “University vice-chancellors are operating in an environment that is controlled by the choices of seventeen-year old students. Funding follows student numbers and so the future of Britain’s science base rests on the university choices of sixth-formers. In addition, laboratory-based subjects are not adequately funded. This is a clear example of market failure. The government has to realise that its aspirations for science, set out in the chancellor’s “Next steps” programme following the March budget, will not happen unless they look again at how university departments are funded; the current model disadvantages laboratory-based subjects, especially physics”.