Guest editorial: Russ Swann - LaboratoryTalk

Governments of all persuasions will routinely trot out the mantra that education is their number-one priority, and that of all their number-one priorities science and engineering education comes right at the top. The investment in learning and knowledge, they assure us, is the only way to secure the prosperity of future generations. They usually tell us this just before announcing another round of cuts to their education budget, with the axe falling hardest on the less popular subject areas such as, well, science and engineering.

I think we can all expect to hear more of this blather in the months ahead, as governments look at all areas of expenditure with a level of scrutiny that could easily be thought of as panic. All those countless currency units used to support the corrupt and inept banking system mean that those areas of the economy that create wealth by actually doing things, instead of shuffling bits of paper, are going to find it ever harder to secure funds. Bet on education being one of them, despite its avowed priority-one status.

But there are a couple of reasons to be optimistic about the relative importance of technical learning among the wider educational programme. One of those, ironically, is the economy. We have seen in past recessions that students have a rather different perspective on their choice of courses than they do in times of prosperity. Suddenly an undergraduate might look at a degree in media studies or basketball as something of a luxury, and opt instead for a course offering at least a glimmer of employability. Here the sciences will benefit.

There's also the element of fashion. We have long suffered the stigma of nerdiness and dullness, while the flibbertygibbets of the arts world preened about. But no more: science is once again cool. The reason owes a lot to high-profile Big Science projects in the news, such as the Large Hadron Collider and the Human Genome Project. Even when, as is the case with the LHC, things don't quite go according to plan, the coverage makes our subject areas more sexy.


Possibly goes to show the old maxim - "There's no such thing as bad publicity" holds true in this case.