A helping hand for universities in UK 2010 budget
In his 2010 budget statement last week, UK Chancellor Alistair Darling left the government’s plans for efficiency savings unchanged but introduced some much needed help for higher education. A one-off funding of £270 million is to help universities create 20,000 more places for students, largely on technology, science, and engineering courses. Money alone is unlikely to reverse the decline in the number of students on computer science courses, but encouraging and promoting innovation could inspire teenagers to move into technical careers.
A paper produced by the Council of Professors and Heads of Computing in association with e-skills UK and the British Computer Society in 2008 warned that the country was sitting on a ticking time-bomb, with a significant and increasing gap between supply and demand for IT professionals in the critical IT sectors of the economy. The report warned that if left unchecked the shortage will severely damage the competitiveness of UK industry in the global marketplace, and will hit smaller employers and the public sector particularly hard. Technology skills are in short supply even in a recession; according to a Silicon.com skills survey, one fifth (21%) of respondents could not fill their IT vacancies in 2009.
Fostering innovation
Also announced in the budget was the University Enterprise Capital Fund, with funding of £35 million to lower barriers to productizing inventions and turning university discoveries into moneymaking ventures. Recent inventions by UK universities include a pioneering rapid manufacturing (RM) process by Loughborough University that uses printing and infrared heating technology to manufacture products using powder materials such as nylon. Another is the so-called “edible car”, a “green” Formula 3 racing car developed at the University of Warwick that was built of raw materials including carrots, potatoes, and nuts, and runs on biodiesel produced from vegetable oil and chocolate.
More encouragement for innovation that could pique interest in software is going to come from an institute for web-based innovation to be funded to the tune of £30 million as part of the Digital Britain program. The new institute will be led by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the Web, to realize the social and economic benefits of advances in the Web. The Internet has provided many with the opportunity to innovate; the phenomenal success of Google is widely acknowledged, but there are plenty of other technology companies that are pushing the limits of technology, such as Wolfram Alpha, an Internet-based knowledge and answers engine. The company behind the engine is Wolfram Research, which was co-founded by the British scientist Stephen Wolfram.
A drop in the ocean but it is a start
The £270 million is a one-off measure and does not cancel out the cuts in government funding of £315 million previously announced for the next academic year. The other newly announced funds for innovation and technology are but a drop in the ocean compared to the billions of pounds spent on shoring up UK banks. If we ignore the uncertainty cast over these plans by the forthcoming general election and if we factor in other government pledges, the total sums become more substantial. For example, the UK’s 2010 budget includes £2 billion for a green investment bank to help with innovation in green technology that could lead to advances in green IT. Cash-strapped universities are likely to follow up on all these potential sources of funding for research and development, but, judging by the size of the funding, will mostly find themselves in competition with a myriad of non-academic start-ups.
The UK government is not alone in its attempts to foster technical innovation. The US government, for example, has made green innovation a key part of its colossal $80 billion economic stimulus package. The German government has dedicated €400 million to green energy programs in areas such as energy storage, logistics and transport, and energy efficiency in the home. With increasing global competition, innovation is key to every country’s economic growth and none can afford to be behind in that race.
With Thanks to Ovum