Departments of university physics in the United Kingdom at risk of closing, survey reveals | Physical
The leaders of the British physics departments say that their subject faces a national crisis as one in four warns that their university departments are likely to close due to financing pressures.
In an anonymous survey of department heads by the Institute of Physics (IOP), 26% said they were faced with the potential closure of their department over the next two years, while 60% said they expected the prices.
Four out of five departments said they were making staff cuts, and many envisaged mergers or consolidation in what senior physicists have described as a serious threat to the future success of the United Kingdom.
A head of physics in a university said: “Our university has a deficit of 30 million pounds sterling. Staff recruitment is frozen, morale is low. However, colleagues in our school continue to deliver with less and less and under pressure.
Professor Daniel Thomas, president of the IOP chief of physics forum and chief of the School of Physics and Mathematics of the University of Portsmouth, said that the conclusions of the investigation were “a great concern” for British leadership in important areas.
“Physics really underpin all technological advances – it has done it in the past and will do so in the future. So many strategic priorities in the United Kingdom, our leadership in many areas, are underpinned by physics in things like Quantum, Photonics, Space, Green Technologies, Data Sciences, Defense Industries, Nuclear Sciences-All of these obviously need highly qualified physicists to manage, “said Thomas.
“If we lose these skills, if we do not have the next generation in these skills, then of course, we certainly count our world leadership as a country – this is a great concern.”
To avoid “irreversible damage”, PIO requires immediate government action, including funding, to support existing laboratories and research facilities, as well as the implementation of an “early alert system” to monitor services at risk of closing and reduce pressures affecting international recruitment of students.
In the longer term, it calls for radical reforms in the financing of higher education in order to allow universities to respond to the complete costs of the teaching of significant matters on a national scale such as physics.
Sir Keith Burnett, president of the FPI and former president of physics at the University of Oxford, said: “Although we understand pressures on public finances, it would be negligent not to ring the alarm for a fundamental national capacity for our well-being, our competitiveness and the defense of the field.
“We are walking towards an edge of the cliff, but there is still time to avoid a crisis that would not only lead to lost potential, but to many physics departments that stop completely.
“Researchers in physics and talented physics students are our future, but if action is not taken now to stabilize, strengthen and maintain one of our greatest national assets, we risk leaving them high and dry.”
Thomas said that the erosion of the value of internal tuition fees and the decline in the number of international students were at the origin of financial pressures, the smaller physics departments.
“This means that we will get more and more concentration of the place where physics is taught and lose geographic distribution.
A government spokesperson said that he increased funding for public research and innovation by more than 22.5 billion pounds per year by 2029-30, representing a 3% increase in real terms compared to 2025-26.
“Our 86 billion pounds sterling for public research and development until 2030 will help the world’s world class universities to direct the discoveries,” said a spokesperson.
