Three pieces of news, seemingly unconnected but, perhaps, with more in common than initially seems the case. The first is that the UK Trade deficit for January 2010 was, at a shade under GBP8bn, the worst since August 2008 and this against the backdrop of a very weak pound sterling which would usually be expected to boost exports. The second is the call from both major political parties for government investment in UK scientific research to be protected against any cuts in post election efforts to restore the nation\'s finances. The third is that employers of graduates in the UK have expressed the view that more university students has not seemed to add up to more graduates qualified in the things that the economy needs.

However, these are not really unconnected at all. The UK relies heavily on services to generate the wealth needed to finance a modern society but, in truth, not everybody is suited to the service sector; there are still a lot of people who work best in three dimensions, i.e. with their hands to make things or operate machinery that makes things. We call it manufacturing and the UK is not as good at that as some, like Germany. And if you\'re going to make things then you\'ll probably need to invent and design things to make which is where scientific research comes into play, as well as other hard qualifications such as engineering.

Unfortunately, too many of the thousands of additional university undergraduates of whom the government boasts do not select science or engineering or any other disciplines that require solid fact based learning as the foundation for competence and creativity. They choose the soft, ill defined subjects that can hardly be called disciplines at all. Putting it bluntly, if additional university places do not give us more scientists and engineers which we need but, instead, give us more social psychologists and environmental planners for whom we have to find tax money in order to employ them, what is the point of more university places.

The UK does have many people who would be good in the manufacturing sector if it was large enough or had enough management capacity to employ them and it woudl be no bad thing for the UK economy if its reliance on service based commerce were less. Perhaps any incoming government would do well to start to encourage and invest in those hard disciplines that produce people capable of designing and building things that we could make.

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