Save Physics & Astronomy at Sussex!

Not long ago I posted an item about cuts to the School of Physics & Astronomy at the University of Nottingham, which included a link to an open letter protesting the decision. About 2700 people signed that letter. It remains to be seen whether it makes any difference.

At the end of that item about Nottingham I wrote

I fear more such news is coming. The UK Higher Education sector is shrinking rapidly. Nottingham University won’t be the last, and I doubt the contagion will be restricted to the UK either…

There have indeed been other announcements of redundancies, including Exeter and Hertfordshire and another at an institution I have worked at, the University of Sussex. The Department of Physics & Astronomy there has been informed that it is to lose 35% of its staff. That means about a dozen posts have to go, with letters going to those in Astronomy and Particle Physics. The authorities at Sussex are no doubt taking their cue from the decision of the Science and Technology Facilities Council to cut grant funding in those areas.

As regular readers of this blog will know, I was Head of School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences at Sussex, which encompassed the Department of Physics & Astronomy, from 2013 to 2016 (when I stepped down for personal reasons). That was a very upbeat period for Physics and Astronomy at Sussex, which makes it very painful to see how badly things are going now just a decade later. When I was Head I was very conscious of the danger of relying too much on STFC science, so we did diversify quite a bit, but even in my worst nightmares I had no idea things would come to this.

Anyway, there is an open letter about Physics & Astronomy at Sussex which I encourage you to sign. When I last looked it only had 336 signatories, but the cause is at least as worthy as at Nottingham.

Hate it when I agree with Ian Chapman: https://www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-research-councils-2026-6-ian-chapman-ai-driven-bid-surge-means-things-have-to-change/

Otoh, he's the guy who allocated £2bn of his budget to unspecified "AI-research" stuff while "accidentally" causing a catastrophe in other bits if the portfolio, and of course he's not the guy on the pointy ends of the ballooning applications or dwindling success rates. He's still waiting for his #STFC crisis to get lost in the long grass, btw

Since I accidentally redownloaded Star Trek : Fleet Command I'm on my bullshit.

Got my U.S.S Franklin, just built the Kumari, ops is sitting at 24 and I'm at 2mil power. Rookie numbers, probably but I also haven't spent a dime on this game.

Working on grinding Romulan faction

Nottingham University Management Messages

Last week I posted about the dire situation at Nottingham University and particularly in the School of Physics & Astronomy there. I since learned that I didn’t get the nunbers quite right: it appears that there are 71 staff in the School and 56 received notices that their jobs are at risk. There are 23 Professors in the School and 20 have received letters. The intention is that about 20 jobs will be lost across all academic and technical staff.

The open letter and petition here has already garnered over 2000 signatures, but more can’t do any harm.

I’ve heard also that staff at Notitngham are about to start a Marking and Assessment Boycott in response to the plans. This seems entirely reasonable to me and I would support further industrial action too. There is more about the situation in Physics World here.

I mentioned in my previous post that

Not all those in receipt of an “at risk” letter will actually be made redundant, but the intention is clearly to scare people into leaving in order to save on redundancy payments.

No doubt some positions will be saved by retirements and voluntary severance, but cuts on the scale being planned will be difficult to achieve without a significant number of compulsory redundancies. The messaging from the University Management is not subtle.

I have no idea what the management “plan” is at Nottingham, but I suspect it goes something like this, from the current Private Eye:

The effect of all this on staff morale will be devastating, but there will also be a practical effect. The more mobile, especially those with portable individual research grants, and those not tied to laboratories, will already be looking to move elsewhere. That will no doubt include some of Nottingham’s best researchers. It won’t be easy to move elsewhere in the UK, however, as the higher education system is collapsing. Other universities will no doubt follow a similar path,

Unfortunately, the recent goings-on at the Science and Technology Facilities Council will almost certainly be taken as a cue to shed posts in PPAN areas (Particle Physics, Astronomy and Nuclear Physics), as grants in these areas are to be drastically reduced. This is a clear signal that STFC wants the PPAN community to shrink. As far as I can see, Nottingham University currently employs about eleven Academic Staff in Astronomy and a similar number in Particle Cosmology.

On a personal note, in the interest of full disclosure, I joined Nottingham University as Professor of Astrophysics in January 1999. Neither of these groups existed then and the School of Physics (as it was) was struggling in the doldrums. The incorporation of Astronomy led to the name being changed to the School of Physics & Astronomy, led to a boost in undergraduate recruitment and improved research assessment outcome. The Particle Cosmology group came a bit later. The University’s original plan for Astronomy was just one Professor and two lecturers! I pushed particularly hard for this when I was there. I left Nottingham in 2007 and watched from the outside as both groups prospered over the years, due not only to teaching and research but also to an effective outreach campaign centered around Sixty Symbols. I feel very sad to see their future so drastically threatened.

While I am on the subject of messages, the Vice-Chancellor of Nottingham University, Jane Norman, has recently announced publicly that she thinks the University might go bust by 2031 without these cuts. Now, if you were a prospective Nottingham University student, how would you respond to a statement that the University you are thinking of applying to could run out of money in five years? The VC can’t possibly imagine that recruitment will remain buoyant in this situation, can she? Her blundering attempt to justify the planned cuts brings the prospect of a death spiral at Nottingham closer.

As James Binney put it in his comment on the open letter:

If these redundancies go ahead, the best physics faculty will leave Nottingham, outstanding candidates will no longer accept offers from Nottingham and the quality of the student body will rapidly decline. It takes generations to create a world-class department, but one can be destroyed in less than a decade.

Pet peeve of the moment: forms requiring substantial content entry, nonetheless described as "pro formas" as if the Latin is just to sound fancy rather than meaning a formal nicety.

Meta-peeve: the #STFC prioritisation exercise "pro forma" _possibly_ being allowed that title by its dumb alternative meaning of speculative fiscal scenarios.