Physics Departments at Risk of Closing

The heads of UK physics departments say their subject is facing a national crisis as one in four warns that their university departments are in danger of closing because of funding pressures.

In an anonymous survey of department heads by the Institute of Physics (IoP), 26% said they faced potential closure of their department within the next two years, while 60% said they expected courses to be reduced.

Four out of five departments said they were making staff cuts, and many were considering mergers or consolidation in what senior physicists described as a severe threat to the UK’s future success.

A head of physics at one university said: “Our university has a £30m deficit. Staff recruitment is frozen, morale is low. Yet colleagues in our school continue to deliver with less and less and under increasing pressure. I’m very concerned that we are close to breaking point.”

Prof Daniel Thomas, the chair of the IoP’s heads of physics forum and head of the University of Portsmouth’s school of physics and mathematics, said the survey’s findings were “a great concern” for UK leadership in important areas.

“Physics really underpins all technological advances – it has done so in the past and will do so in the future. So many strategic priorities in the UK, our leadership in many areas, are underpinned by physics in things like quantum, photonics, space, green technologies, data science, defence industries, nuclear science – all of those obviously need highly skilled physicists to run,” Thomas said.

“If we lose those skills, if we don’t educate the next generation in those skills, then of course we are definitely jeopardising our world leadership as a country – that’s a great concern.”

To avoid “irreversible damage”, the IoP is asking for immediate government action including funding to support existing labs and research facilities, as well as setting up an “early warning system” to monitor departments at risk of closure, and reduce pressures affecting international student recruitment.

In the longer term it is calling for radical reforms in higher education funding to allow universities to meet the full costs of teaching nationally important subjects such as physics.