This week saw the much trailed departure of Tony Blair as UK prime minister. In a Commentary (Nature 447, 1053; 2007) in the current issue of Nature, Sir Robert May, the government’s chief science adviser from 1995 to 2000, reflects on the Blair legacy. In many ways, he says, science and engineering prospered. Yet there is general discontent amongst scientists in UK universities, and many current trends are potentially damaging. Blair’s successors — Gordon Brown initially — will have much to do if the country is to continue to thrive scientifically.

…why is there discontent among scientists in UK universities? Are we perhaps revealing an inherent, Eeyore-like glumness? I think not.

Although student numbers, faculty positions and research funds have all increased, they have not done so in equal proportions. Student-to-staff ratios are almost universally higher than 15 years ago. And research funding — despite its increase in real terms — has not kept pace with the increasing number of active researchers, themselves spurred on by the demands of the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE), which every few years rates individual academic departments. Life seems harder than it used to be.

Even more important, in my opinion, than higher teaching loads and the increasingly fierce competition for grants, is the extreme growth of bureaucracy — too often masquerading as accountability. The ballooning of the civil service since 1997 means that there are now more conscientious administrators who hold meetings and send out forms to be filled in. And universities have matched or exceeded the growth in bureaucrats seen in the civil service. This growth is only partly justified by need. One issue that Brown might address is that the current number of central administrative staff is roughly equal to the number of faculty for four major UK universities; this would certainly raise eyebrows at many top US universities.