SCIENCE, more than any other area of business, needs people with higher qualifications and skills – a first degree is the virtual minimum for entry-level jobs. Any country’s prosperity is dependent on a robust supply of people with science, technology, engineering and maths qualifications.
Yet the UK, like the US, is failing dismally to train enough people in the science skills that businesses need. In bioscience, for example, the number of universities offering these subjects is in decline, as is the number of first degrees gained, and only a small minority of graduates enter industry or take their learning further.
