The Institute of Physics this month published a report (http://www.physicsweb.org) warning of a shortage in the number of UK-trained physicists. Although the overall number of undergraduates taking physics degrees has remained the same, more of them are being siphoned off into fields such as engineering and information technology.
The contributing factors to the problem are diverse — but they start in education. Far fewer UK physics students are choosing to become teachers. In the early 1990s, almost 600 of the roughly 2,400 new physics graduates went into teaching. Now that figure has dropped to about 200. Meanwhile, a quarter of existing physics teachers are over 50 years old, compared with just 11% who are under 30.
The Institute of Physics has a plan to combat the predicted shortage. It recommends a new kind of degree that would accept students with poorer maths skills, then attempt to improve those skills during courses that would expose the students to an interdisciplinary approach to problem solving.
It's a creative response to a vexing issue, but one can't help but wonder whether it really addresses the root of the problem — especially in the context of other data within the same report. For example, the report mentions decreased support for physics infrastructure, perhaps most evident in the "chronic under-funding" of laboratory infrastructure, which has led to the loss of over 10 university departments over the past decade.
It's likely that undergraduates who would make good candidates for existing physics degrees are aware of this lack of support, and choose to pursue other fields. And it's also possible that students who lack the mathematical savvy of their peers still have the ability to know a poor career outlook when they see one.