Professor Ulrike Tillmann: “The UK cannot afford to cut the M from STEM”

“If universities across the country follow Birkbeck’s lead, maths deserts will become a reality”, says London Mathematical Society Professor Ulrike Tilmann, in a new article for Times Higher Education.

Referring to the recent announcement that Birkbeck University is due to cut up to half of its staff from the Mathematics and Statistics Department. Yet, as a joint letter signed by the Presidents of the UK’s Mathematical Sciences Societies states, this may “render the Birkbeck degree in mathematics and statistics untenable”. This could create a maths desert – an area of the country with no opportunities for maths education beyond A-Level.

Professor Tillmann wrote:

“If universities across the country follow Birkbeck’s lead, maths deserts will become a reality. Though the funding cuts for departments may be slow to begin with, their impact will reduce the scope and diversity of the mathematics pipeline. Grant holders, for instance, will see the writing on the wall and leverage their funding to secure positions elsewhere – and the loss of their funding and status will make the demise of their former department all the more likely. Such “academic flight” has already been seen at the University of Leicester, for instance.”

Recognising that the creation of a maths desert could lead to mathematics becoming a high-tariff degree, Professor Tillmann writes that the closing of the Department could betray both social mobility and the Government’s ambition to level up the country:

“The avoidance of maths deserts is also necessary to fulfil the government’s ambition to level up the country. Mathematics is one of the best degrees in terms of future earnings; Deloitte calculated the salary premium for advanced maths skills to be around £8,000 a year.

However, students from lower-income and BAME backgrounds, as well as mature students, are much less likely to go to university outside their local area. So if they live in a maths desert, any hopes of using a maths degree to obtain upward social mobility will be a mirage.

Even in areas where high-quality mathematics provision exists, financial pressures may limit access for non-traditional students. That is especially true for mature learners. For instance, a series of recent policy directions, such as the tripling of tuition fees, are putting severe strain on lifelong learning in general, and on Birkbeck, University of London, in particular, 88 per cent of whose students are over the age of 21 and 65 per cent of whom are from BAME backgrounds.”

You can read the full article here.