The report is widely seen as a blueprint for reorganizing research funding throughout the sciences. It calls for a three-tiered university system, with expensive research equipment concentrated in top-level universities and little or no opportunity for research in the lower two levels.
At present all 36 university departments in geology and geophysics can try, in principle, to conduct world-class research in various topics. But the report, from a group led by University of Cambridge geologist Ron Oxburgh, argues that this approach spreads the available funds and equipment too thin.
The report says most money should go to 10 or so "level one" centers that would be expected to compete with large departments overseas, especially in the United States. Each would have as many as 30 scientists, so 300 of the current 570 earth sciences faculty in the United Kingdom might hope to find a place in the new elite. The ...
