The closure of university chemistry departments and courses in the UK is leading to the emergence of ‘cold spots’, areas where the subject cannot be studied within a reasonable travel time, the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) has warned.

Currently, these chemistry cold spots, where travel time by car to the nearest university with an active chemistry undergraduate course exceeds an hour (see figure below), are emerging in East Yorkshire and the Humber, with the closure of the University of Hull’s chemistry department last year, and in North Wales, with the closure of the chemistry department at Bangor University in 2019. However, there’s concern that further closures could lead to the number of cold spots expanding.

In recent years, chemistry departments in the UK have been closing, shrinking and merging, as universities face increasing financial pressures. In April, the University of Bradford announced that it would be closing its chemistry courses and Cardiff University announced plans to merge its chemistry department with two other schools. The University of East Anglia has also proposed cutting full-time faculty, including 22 from science.

This continues a trend from the year before, which saw the University of Hull confirming closure of its chemistry department and Aston University closing its undergraduate chemistry and applied chemistry courses, while the University of Reading’s chemistry department narrowly escaped closure with a last minute reprieve in November 2024.

Chemistry still threatened

And this pattern appears set to repeat. Most recently, the University of Leicester announced in June 2025 that it was entering a four-week-long period of ‘pre-change engagement’ – an early stage of consultation where staff and stakeholders are invited to share feedback on proposals – across several academic areas, including chemistry.

And, at the University of Sheffield, which faced a £50 million shortfall last year after student numbers fell because of a reduction in the number of international students, a review of chemistry and other subjects is set to be carried out in September. According to reporting by the BBC, the university has already suspended new student intake for 24 of its courses, including its chemistry and sustainability and polymer chemistry master’s.

‘The financial sustainability crisis in higher education is biting hard, forcing universities to take difficult decisions and unfortunately leading to cuts, mergers and closures in chemistry departments,’ says Katie Raymer-Woods, a policy adviser at the RSC. ‘We are starting to see “cold spots” emerge where no provision of the subject is available within a reasonable travel time. This is restricting student choice and impacting some groups of students more than others,’ she adds.

Jason Love, head of the school of chemistry at the University of Edinburgh and the new chair of Heads of Chemistry UK (HCUK), says the recent chemistry department closures are a reflection of how the whole higher education sector is struggling with ‘chronic underfunding’. ‘That can particularly impact on chemistry departments, because often chemistry departments can find themselves to be one of the smaller departments in the university … [and] being that department that costs a little bit more to run because we have extensive laboratories,’ he adds.

‘This is a sector-wide issue that leaves chemistry departments particularly vulnerable,’ he adds. ‘We seem to be going through this cycle that happened 15 years ago, with other chemistry departments closing. I don’t know what the way out is. That’s the hardest thing.’

Sharing savings

Love says that UK chemistry department closures have been discussed ‘a lot’ at recent HCUK meetings, including conversations about how universities can support each other, potentially by pooling resources. ‘We have a joint postgraduate programme with St Andrews; we submit a joint [Research Excellent Framework] return, and part of that was to develop EaStCHEM and the pooling of equipment; we have certain equipment in Edinburgh that St Andrews don’t have and they can use, and they have equipment that we can use. [But] that’s at a research level, at an undergraduate level that would be tremendously difficult, unless you want to consider moving lots of students around to different laboratories. [But] how you do that with institutions that are not in the same city? I have no idea. That’s a really tricky thing to achieve.’

With the emergence of these cold spots comes restricted choice that will hit students hard, particularly those from lower socio-economic backgrounds who are more likely to live with family and commute to a local university, the RSC has warned.

‘For people from poorer families, going to university at this point in time is a really tough decision, especially if you then have to then move away from your local area and pay for all of your accommodation – that’s very difficult,’ Love adds. ‘If you think about these cold spots, that’s where people will be truly disadvantaged, because there’s not that local ability to study the subject that they want to at a local university.’

The RSC Future Workforce and Educational Pathways report, published in 2024, shows that chemistry jobs are projected to grow by 6.5% in a decade – 30% faster than the average growth rate for the UK workforce – demonstrating that the demand for chemistry skills is set to increase across multiple sectors. More recently, it has been highlighted how chemistry skills and research are key to delivering the UK government’s recently published industrial strategy.

‘Decisions being made at an institutional level can fail to take into account the bigger picture, not considering how course and department closures will affect skills provision and access in a region, nor the long-term research and innovation capability and capacity of the UK as a whole,’ says Raymer-Woods. ‘It is crucial that governments take action locally and nationally, ensuring that chemistry research and innovation continues to benefit regional economies, and that chemistry degree programmes remain available across the UK to train our future chemistry workforce.’

Local chemist shortages

Jonathan Oxley, senior manager at the Confederation of British Industry, executive director of Humber Energy Board and an RSC board trustee, says that businesses are already struggling to recruit ‘people who are numerate and logical’, whether they be chemists, surveyors, engineers, physicists or mathematicians. ‘This is deeply unhelpful, and it’s relatively easy to make the link that a company that practises chemistry and, therefore, needs some chemists or chemical scientists, are going to be denuded of that supply of chemists in an area or nationally overall.’

‘I don’t use my chemistry skills on a daily basis but I would not have had the career path I have if I hadn’t studied chemistry x years ago. So, whether you’re practising in a direct chemistry facing role or whether you’re actually just an active part of the business environment it’s phenomenally helpful to have people who have a degree of logic and trained thought.’

Oxley explains that businesses want to be able to attract a broad cross section of graduates with the skillsets that meet their needs. ‘What we therefore face with chemistry deserts is, unless those individuals as they come out of school or college have the ambition, the willingness and the wherewithal financial or otherwise, to go and study chemistry in Newcastle, Durham, Exeter, wherever, and then come back, then those people are lost to those businesses. You won’t get people from the East Yorkshire area, who studied chemistry in East Yorkshire, who then go to work for East Yorkshire business.’

But he says businesses should also be actively thinking about what they can do to attract the talent they are looking for, not just wait for it to come to them. ‘Businesses have had a relatively easy way of being able to access talent over the last 15 to 20 years, and that landscape has now changed with our exit from the European Union … [We need to be] thinking about how we can chip away at enhancing the understanding of chemistry and chemical sciences, and the broader opportunities of doing a subject like chemistry all the way through secondary school potentially down to primary school.’

‘When you look at the [Future Workforce and Educational Pathways] study that the Royal Society of Chemistry has undertaken, you see quite a healthy future for people who have chemistry degrees, so the need is there,’ Oxley says. ‘We have to make sure that we’ve got a healthy capacity to deliver that from within the UK.’

‘The key issue here is really showing everybody how chemistry contributes across the piste, in terms of technology, in terms of the environment, in terms of climate change, and how it often underpins a lot of the other sciences as well,’ says Love. ‘It’s important to keep that message strong, so that people understand what chemistry does and what chemistry can do.’