Dipartimenti di fisica universitaria del quartiere del Regno Unito a rischio di chiusura, rilevamento dell’indagine
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2025/sep/20/quarter-of-uk-university-physics-departments-at-risk-of-closing-survey-finds
di bcoolhead
10 commenti
Remember though folks, don’t need to worry about the crisis in HE because its only going to affect mickey mouse degrees at ex-polys.
Don’t blink when the last remaining world renown UK institution is on its knees after a decade of begging for help and being spat at by the country instead.
This doesn’t actually surprise me, when I did it the physics department was in a pretty dire state. No real dedicated facilities like the engineering department and actually very few applicants. Whereas an engineering lecture was usually full, physics didn’t even fill an entire lecture hall for the most part. the only building they did have was basically falling apart structurally. You could tell it was a subject that wasn’t really respected by the university.
It amazes me they haven’t already. Physics in the UK has been in a terrible spot for a while.
Unfortunately this isn’t surprising.
Science degrees, while good for getting money from overseas students, aren’t valued in this country as they are too hard.
I was at a plate glass university in 2000 when they shut their chemistry department and combined their physics department. They now don’t award physics degrees but you can do engineering and maths…
This trend is just going to snowball. There’s already been a widespread closure of chemistry departments.
STEM subjects are typically expensive to run. Universities don’t see it making business sense anymore. According to friends who work in academia, there’s a sense that the number of international students attending UK universities will decline precipitously in coming years due to Government policy. International students contribute a whole lot more money than domestic students, so without them, departments just cannot afford to operate.
Higher education is one of the few areas where the UK is genuinely world leading (though many other countries have massively narrowed the gap). It is such a valuable part of the UK economy, but also valuable as part of the UK’s culture and heritage.
One of the major problems with successive UK governments is none of them seem to look at the big picture. Department budgets and strategy exist in isolation rather than as part of a whole where everything impacts everything else. There’s little evidence of wider economy planning.
Yet another marketisation of higher education success
Is this really an issue? It just suggests the market is oversaturated for Physics degree providers.
Surely over the time, the lesser Universities will close their departments and quality applicants will be concentrated in the top tier Unis.
I’m not surprised. It’s the same fees for physics as history of art. When I did physics in the 90s there was about 15 hours of lectures and 9 hours labs a week (in a fully equipped lab). History of art was a tough 4 hours a week with time off for reading.
I’m surprised they lasted this long. I was at Exeter when the chemistry dept closed. Physics was breaking even but only because we worked really hard to get research funding and other income. Teaching science is really expensive, getting the same funding as other subjects makes it uneconomic. And we have specifically told unis to follow the money.
It’s probably more accurate to say the departments are in a superposition of open and closed and once the budget for next year is measured then they will collapse into one or the other.
And not to worry, there’s at least one parallel world where the department is open so everyone can just study there.