Sorry about the blog post title – it’s one my favourite South Park Christmas songs and it is in my head at the moment. It is also fairly apt for tomorrow’s announcement by the STFC. Their council of elders met today to discuss the research council’s future direction and tomorrow at 2pm they’re dropping the bomb. UK astronomy is looking at devastating, era-defining funding cuts as the STFC attempts to ‘prioritise’ where its money goes. They are widely expected to reveal a plan for the next 5 years that puts facilities ahead of people and there are many UK astronomers bracing for the news that their jobs will very soon cease to exist. Merry Fucking Christmas!
I’m not one to engage in STFC politics – I’m far too vulnerable and ignorant as a PhD student. There are much better blogs to read about that sort of thing. However in light of the prospect that I might shortly head into this funding minefield to try and get a job, I figure I may as well make a few observations. It is also worth spreading the word around the blogosphere. Most of my readers are from outside the UK and are likely unaware of the disaster unfolding in UK astronomy.
The funding gap is an astonishing £70 million which itself begs some explanation. How on Earth did it come to this? As I understand it, the STFC is going from around £100 million of annual spending power to just £30 million. That is a massive drop and although I understand where some of it came from (exchange rates and loans, for example), it always seems to hark back to a more general problem of bad management. The merger of PPARC and the CCLRC was clearly a disaster – you cannot merge two financial entities, remove a huge chunk of money and expect everything to be hunky-dory.
The management of the fallout from that merger was also appalling and confusing. The best example was in a town hall meeting at the 2008 National Astronomy Meeting. A student who asked why he should ‘take the risk’ of studying solar physics when there were now going to be no UK jobs in the field was told by the head-honchos of UK astronomy that he could either wait ten years or go and work abroad. Brilliant.
The STFC – like many other organisations and individuals – isn’t standing up and fighting for science enough. With the current economic climate you can see how education and hospitals might get defacto precedent over radio telescopes and PhD grants – but the truth is that there IS money around still – just not as much. If astronomy doesn’t fight for it then someone else will obviously get it – we shouldn’t just willingly roll over and perish. If the STFC won’t argue the case for the benefits to society from astrophysics research then who will?
Finally there is the issue of people vs. facilities. Job security in UK astronomy is rock-bottom right now and not just because of these looming budget cuts. The rolling grants that sustain many researchers in the UK - including many of my friends at Cardiff University – are reducing dramatically and coming up for review more often. In short many people no longer know if they’ll have a job from one year to the next. This is terrible for recruitment and terrible for morale. I have joked before about the deathly way in which we are sometimes told of colleagues ‘leaving astronomy’ – something that is almost always a one-way shift – but for many UK astronomers at the moment this is likely the sound option if you have a family or a mortgage. It usually pays better too.
The tragedy is that as 2009, the International Year of Astronomy, comes to a close, astronomy in the UK sits under an ironic cloud. Having spent the year trying to inspire the country to become excited by astronomy, many professional astronomers may go into 2010 as financial analysts, software developers or web designers. This country has an incredible astronomical history and, although I’m sure that will continue in the long term, it will be a very sad thing if tomorrow we learn that 70% of UK astronomy is no more. There is surely some other approach to the problem than slashing budgets, culling jobs and pretending that this is the direction we were aiming for all along.
If anyone on the STFC Council is reading – and I doubt they are – how about holding steadfast to the people instead of the facilities? You can always buy back into some telescope down the road but you’ll not get back the postdoc who is forced to leave to go work for a bank. How about making the case for UK astronomy and fighting for more money from the government?
Just a few observations. Like I say, I don’t know enough about all this. I’ve probably oversimplified it and brushed over the details. But it affects me and my family, it affects my country and my future and since I have a voice in this blog, I might as well use it. I hope I’ve got it all wrong and I await the news tomorrow afternoon. But I have a feeling this Christmas will be a crappy one for far too many astronomers.
UPDATE: In view of Amanda’s comments below I’d thought I’d add that if you want to try to help save astronomy you should visit http://www.saveastronomy.org.uk/ and take a look around. You can write to your MP, as I have done, and just tell people about it. They have examples of letters, links to online petitions and general information. You can also read Paul Crowther’s website which explains every part of this disaster in stunning detail.
If any-one from the STFC Council does read the title of this blog then they would probably read no further. Do you really have to use such language. Yes it is frustrating but swearing isn’t going to help especially in a blog that can be accessed by all.
How about going to source with your complaints. I don’t agree with what the STFC is doing either but I also don’t think using language like that is helpful.
Just to add I have lost my job before and no it isn’t much fun with no money and no prospects but I didn’t go around swearing and feeling sorry for myself. If it bothers you that much get together with like minded people and do something constructive and quit moaning.
Pretty crappy Christmas for Turkey’s too
Rob, I’m glad you used that language. It’s entirely appropriate for this situatuib and I feel all the better for reading it. The problem is Amanda, we have all tried to do something about it and we’re not feeling sorry for ourselves, but rather, we are completely astonished by the turn of events, there is nothing we can do anymore. It’s not that some people will lose jobs (we all take the credit crunch very seriously), but that some of the best, inspirational, potential Nobel prize winning, amazingly talented people will not have a chance to ask the big questions anymore. The crazy thing is, on the day of STFC cut announcements, I’ve just been asked to talk to the BBC about the latest Herschel Space Telescope results, and the journalist was really excited! The public are really keen to find out all the exciting stuff being discovered, but it’s being stifled by political and bad management decisions. Thanks for making me laugh Rob!
Amanda – do you somehow know what I do outside of this blog? I do in fact often talk with others about better ways to deal with this situation. Alas my view is not very influential as a lowly PhD student. One way I can help to is to make sure the STFC understand the feeling in the community by blogging about it.
I very rarely swear on this blog but I think that UK astronomy being slashed by 70% and many people I know facing the proverbial axe is an occasion where it works quite well. I’m sorry if you are offended by my choice of words, but in this case I’d say you are being overly sensitive.
It’s incredibly unfortunate to hear of your predicament, especially with this being the IYA09′. How backward is it that all this money and effort has been but forth to bolster public support, of which the public is enthusiastically responding, yet the very people who can help the public learn are being culled one by one by job cuts. Don’t feel alone though, I’m over in the US and government spending has been rampant, just not in our sector sadly. Even NASA has faced cuts which are spelling doom for future manned space flight programs. On a more personal note, I am in limbo applying to a graduate program here in the States for astronomy and astrophysics and I’ve been warned that there might not be enough money to support more than 2 new grad students per year (down from 5-6/yr). That cuts my chances of even hoping to get in this year or the next. I know the money is there to fund us, even if its a modicum amount, It just needs to get funneled back our way.
It never ceases to amaze me that people can get so worked up about 7 letters arranged in a certain way. Especially when etymologists are not even sure about the origins of the word, or even whether it was always considered obscene. There’s an excellent article on Wikipedia about it. Amanda doubtless won’t like it.
Like it or not, it very precisely describes the way astronomy has been treated. Anyhow to get back to the subject, Gordon Brown seems happy to throw away £1,500,000,000 on some wild goose chase, but won’t spend £70,000,000 funding proper science. THE STFC laughingly describes itself as ‘independent’. Independent of who exactly? Certainly not the government for it admits to being part of the DBIS. So let’s not put all the blame at the STFC’s door, it’s not them who decide how much money they have to spend.
Hey dude, nice blog Happy Holidays!
Good to see that my reaction appears justified. I shall do a follow-up post about where the axe fell sometime.
Thanks for posting, Santa. Can we have some post-doctoral fellowships back for Christmas?
Sorry TURYEY!!! I mean the BIRD….
Ask yourself ‘How much has SCUBA 2 really cost’? STFC’s continued investment in an instrument that’s way behind shedule, well over budget, and only still reports a faint promise of producing of good science.