Calendar: 1975-1976 Page 407

Annual Report of the Delegacy xxxv One notable change in staff structure deserves attention It is the suspension of the post of Tutor to Women Students with duties con- fined to the admission and welfare of women students and the setting- up instead of an appointment of Dean of Students with duties in respect of all members of the student body Into the new post has been translated that outstanding person whose presence in King's is source of envy outside it Dr Helen Hudson have made some reference to undergraduate students but spoken scarcely at all of postgraduates whose importance to us here is very great believe that in the University of London where there is concentration of source material scholarship and facilities which is in some academic areas virtually unrivalled in the world but where there is severe constraint upon expansion in space the future may lie more and more in the postgraduate sphere particularly in an institution such as our own There is all the more reason therefore for disquiet over the current tendency to lay emphasis upon the financing by govern- ment of research on the principle of contracting for results The recent announcement of cutback in financial support of postgraduate students gives particular cause for concern am fully aware of criticism that some of the research done in Universities is hard to justify on any terms whatever except that it provides congenial livelihood to those doing it and the related sugges- tion that this is situation sometimes used by young people as means of escape from what the critics call 'real work' Whatever substance there may be in these criticisms and suspect there may not be great deal am much more concerned here over an apparent failure to realise the true nature and importance of the research done in the Universities of the United Kingdom have two points to make here The first is that what shall call useless research has to be done some- where and the right place for it in this country where we do not have the research institutions found in the United States and Germany is in the Universities do not say 'valueless' research call it 'useless' in the sense that its results will not offer opportunities for early profitable exploitation so that it is unlikely to be attractive to contractor Some of the research which the contractor could only describe as useless is in the highest degree valuable The right place in the United Kingdom for research of low immediate usefulness but of high value is in the Universities Secondly the people of these offshore islands as is sometimes remarked by visitors from other lands where work begins earlier in the