False images but a new promise in universities' contribution to industrial and technological advance

ABSTRACT

Critics argue that Britain has failed to exploit and turn to commercial advantage its high quality scientific research and that its culture and its educational system reflect an anti-industrial prejudice which has contributed to the nation's decline. This article seeks to refute these arguments in so far as the record of the universities is concerned. It points out the major contribution which university science made in the two World Wars and the extent to which funding declined in the inter-War and post-War periods. It quotes a range of evidence to illustrate the reluctance of large sections of British industry to employ technologically trained graduates in the post-War period and shows how failures of government policy contributed to the Brain Drain. It contrasts the willingness of the US at Federal and State levels to invest in scientific research to produce technological advance with British reluctance to do so. Finally it describes how, even in the face of a failure of leadership by successive British governments to invest appropriately in British science, there is a new enthusiasm in British universities for exploiting scientific research for technological progress whether in the development of new high tech companies or in R and D work within university laboratories.