5th January 2012 Toronto, Canada
Government aims to make UK "best place in the world to do science"
In a speech earlier this week, Universities and Science Minister David Willetts laid out the government’s ambition to make the UK “the best place in the world to do science.” However, he offered no new funding or support and spoke mostly about broad aims for growth.
There were eight principal points from the speech. The Minister:
- Set the Government’s goal that the UK should be the best place in the world to do science
- Released a series of reports showing what the research sponsored by the Research Councils is achieving
- Set out the government’s ambition to have more universities in the world’s top 100
- Announced that the government has invited proposals for new types of university with a focus on science and technology and on postgraduates
- Announced the government’s ambition for universities’ knowledge exchange funding from external sources to grow by 10 % over the next three years
- Announced that the next Catapult Centre will be in the application of satellite technology
- Announced the seting up of leadership councils in e-infrastructure and in synthetic biology
- Released a new report on e-infrastructure strategy
Happily, the aim to attract more international partnerships is exactly what the Science and Innovation Network was set up to achieve.
Thank you very much for posting this information it’s very interesting to read and keep updated with new ideas and strategies for Universities.
I myself am done my schooling and now work at a Calgary moving company. Articles like this really interest me.
As stated in the article:
“David Willetts laid out the government’s ambition to make the UK “the best place in the world to do science.” However, he offered no new funding or support and spoke mostly about broad aims for growth.”
I would like to know who is going to fund this ambition?
Again thank you very much for posting this article I found it very interesting and I hope you don’t mind if I share this with my old classmates as I’m sure they’ll find it as interesting as I did.
Unfortunately, the Minister didn’t explicitly state who would provide any additional funding to help the UK reach this goal. From the tone of the speech, I would assume that he’s looking for the private sector to get involved.