Helen Lee took a 70 per cent cut in salary when she moved from a senior post in the diagnostics company Abbott Laboratories to the department of haematology at the University of Cambridge in 1995. Her main reason for returning to academia mid-career was to take advantage of the greater freedom to choose research questions. Some areas of inquiry have few prospects of a commercial return, and Lee’s is one of them: her group is developing simple, cheap diagnostic tests for infectious diseases such as chlamydia and hepatitis B for use in developing countries.

The impact of a salary cut is probably less severe for a scientist in the early stages of a career. Guy Grant, now a research associate at the Unilever Centre for Molecular Informatics at the University of Cambridge, spent two years working for a pharmaceutical company before returning to university as a postdoc researcher. He took a 30 per cent salary hit but felt it was worthwhile for the greater intellectual opportunities. “I was in my twenties, the stage in a scientist’s career when they have lots of ideas. I wanted the chance to explore those ideas, because at the time I felt that industrial research was a bit of a straitjacket.”

Higher up the ladder, where a pay cut is usually more significant, the demand for scientists with a wealth of experience in industry is forcing universities to make the transition to academia more attractive, according to Lee. Industry scientists tend to receive training that their academic counterparts do not, such as how to build a multidisciplinary team, manage budgets, negotiate contracts and file patent applications. Industry scientists are also well placed to bring something extra to the teaching side of an academic role that will help students get a job when they graduate, says Lee, perhaps experience in good manufacturing practice or product development. “Only a small number of undergraduates or even postdocs will continue in an academic career. So someone leaving university who already has the skills needed to work in an industrial lab has far more potential in the job market than someone who has spent all their time on a narrow research project.”

For a good example of a senior scientist who made the move, you need look no further than Richard Clegg. He was picked as head of the University of Manchester’s Dalton Nuclear Institute because of his experience as director of energy company BNFL’s science wing, which he joined in 1985. The university provided Clegg with a salary to match the pay and other benefits he was getting in industry. “Universities do realise that if they want people who have held senior jobs in industry to take leadership roles in the university sector – and not just those people who are coasting towards retirement – then they have to pay them an equivalent salary package.”

It’s not all plain sailing. For anyone who has become used to the culture of a company, academic hierarchies can come as a surprise, says Clegg. “There is a belief in some university departments that you can’t lead a group of other scientists if you are not an eminent scientist yourself. But being a good scientist doesn’t mean that you will necessarily be a good manager.”

While universities may have realised that they need to match industry salaries, they could do more, says Grant. “If you are considering moving back to university you have probably already accepted that you will take a cut in salary, so it’s more about working conditions,” says Grant. “If universities are seeking to recruit someone, say in their mid-thirties, who has demonstrated potential in industry, then you have to give them equivalent facilities. You can’t just put them in a little room at the back of the department and tell them to get on with it.”

Even in a relatively well-funded university, a newly arrived industrial scientist can be in for shock when it comes to things such as access to equipment. Lee admits to missing the “structured resources” of a well-funded industrial lab. “A corporation will give you everything you need to accomplish the goals that have been set for you. That is not just money and equipment, but people with the other skills that you need,” she explains. She recalls that after giving up a job where she had responsibility for 100 people and a $20 million budget, among her first tasks at Cambridge were to buy a laboratory stool and to fix a broken venetian blind.

Establishing a viable research group is expensive, and finding the funds can be difficult, says Grant. This is starkly illustrated by how much it costs to employ a postdoc – around £70,000, which takes a chunk out of a typical £500,000 grant. “These sorts of sums aren’t exceptional in industry because managers are able to shift resources, but in an academic department you’ll have to raise the funds yourself.”

Lee says these negative aspects are more than compensated for by the other resource that academia has in abundance. “In an industrial lab, people are very focused on their own projects and they don’t have a lot of free time to discuss any [research] problems that you might have. In an academic setting there is a huge amount of knowledge and expertise that is freely available and makes your work much easier and more rewarding.”

Each of the scientists żěè¶ĚĘÓƵ spoke to has never looked back. “One of the attractions of academic science is that it is a creative process. Even now, when the hands-on benchwork is done by my postgraduate students, I still talk to them daily and have an input into formulating ideas and trying out new methods,” says Grant.

“I am happier now than I have ever been in my 25-year working career”

“I am happier now than I have ever been in my 25-year working career,” says Clegg. “What you do get in universities is a lot of intellectual free space and the scope for self-expression. A person will get on in an academic career through their personal achievements and the esteem of their colleagues. Universities give people the opportunity to carve that out for themselves.”

Unfortunately, and unexpectedly, there are not enough people with the crucial five to 10 years of experience that jobs in these high-growth areas usually require – and the shortage is expected to get worse over the next five years.

European and national legislation has increasingly obliged local authorities, manufacturers, developers and others to monitor and deal with any effects their activities may have on the environment. As a result, the UK’s environmental sector has grown from virtually nothing 30 years ago into an employer of more than 170,000 people, with an annual turnover of £16 billion-plus.

But the supply of scientific staff to do the research, monitoring and consultancy has not kept up with the growth in demand. “Over the next five years,” says Jacob Tompkins, policy development adviser to industry association Water UK, “our members will have to implement the requirements of the European water framework directive on integrating river basin management. That will create a need for hydroecologists. As far as I can see, not only do we not have these people, there are not even the university courses that we need to produce them.”

The skills shortage affects both public and private-sector employers, but environmental consultancies are generally reckoned to be hardest hit. Many of these mostly small organisations have sprung up over the past decade to provide services such as environmental impact assessments. Local authorities are almost certain to demand that an EIA be carried out before large development projects receive planning permission.

Clients’ requirements have also become more rigorous, says Penny Anderson, who runs a Derbyshire-based ecology consultancy. “Twenty years ago, assessments used to be pretty basic and were only needed for sites where there were protected species such as bats or great crested newts, or sites of special scientific interest. But now a local authority is much more likely to ask for an ecological survey and that will need to look at everything.”

Anderson says the shortage of suitably trained ecologists is severe but adds that it has not yet started to cause expensive delays to major development projects. “People cope. It means that senior staff are under an awful lot of pressure, but we get by,” she says.

For many companies in the broader environmental field, the solution is to buy in trained staff from abroad, says Nick Reeves, executive director of the Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management, one of the main professional associations. That the UK needs to import expertise in environmental sciences is curious, as it produces so much of the raw material at home. Over the past two decades, broad-based courses have developed into popular first-degree courses offered by many institutions.

In 2004, a total of 3157 UK students were accepted on courses in “physical and terrestrial geography and environmental sciences” – the University and Colleges Admissions Service’s “F8” category. Some will leave the field after graduation, but many are highly motivated students who want to do something positive for the environment. So why is there a shortage of professionals with five to 10 years’ experience?

The problem is that while there is plenty of work for experienced professionals, newly qualified candidates are unlikely to be accepted for a post at the levels where skills shortages are most acute, no matter how good their degree. “Technical ability is only half the story. These jobs need a wide range of other skills that can only be gained with experience, like communicating with clients, making presentations and knowing how to meet deadlines,” says Paul Seeley, from recruitment agency Eden Recruitment in Selkirk.

So it is difficult for graduates without the right experience to get their first jobs, yet they can’t get that vital experience any other way. Many consider changing fields because of this catch-22. But some of the people responsible for generating the supply of graduates don’t accept the cycle is inevitable or unbreakable.

William Hale, admissions tutor for the University of Bradford’s department of geography and environmental science, takes a tough view. “If the consultancies want experienced people, they should be prepared to take on more placement students,” he argues. “We run a four-year course in which students work outside during the third year. It should give the student excellent training and the employer the chance to find out what they can do. But we have tried to find students placements with these consultancies, and the response has always been very poor.”

But it is hard for a consultancy to find the relatively short-term duties suitable for a student, counters Malcolm Pratt, an air pollution expert and technical director at the Cheshire branch of consultancy Entec UK. “The sort of work we are doing requires substantial amounts of judgement and experience, and it is very difficult to find meaningful work for someone who doesn’t have that yet. I would fight strongly against bringing a young person in for a year only to give them a glorified clerical job.”

Pratt points out that the field is highly competitive, and small firms are surviving on narrow profit margins. Few would be able to support temporary members of staff over a long period. And if fee-earning senior staff devote a lot of time to training new staff, profitability is likely to suffer, he says.

Another factor is the attitude of employers towards degrees that provide a broad but relatively shallow education. “Employers like candidates with a good grounding in the basic sciences or in engineering,” says Seeley.

However, employers will have to cast a wider net if they want to fill their vacancies. “There are simply not enough students wanting to take the more traditional science and engineering degrees. Bright young people feel that they can get better jobs in other areas, such as law and financial services. So it is up to the employers in the field to make their jobs much more attractive,” argues Reeves.

Clearly, there are no simple solutions to the skills shortage. Lester Lockyer of Dorset-based recruitment company Allen & York, which specialises in jobs for environmental scientists, believes that both employers and job-hunters have to be flexible. Recent graduates have to show that it is worthwhile for companies to offer them in-house training. In many cases, by acquiring further qualifications, recent graduates may persuade companies that they have the specific skills and the maturity for this sort of technically demanding career.

“Employers will have to cast a wider net if they want to fill vacancies”

Equally, employers must maximise the career opportunities and salaries of their junior employees, so graduates are persuaded to pursue the environmental science career they are trained in rather than drift to other fields with stronger incentives like teaching or computing. By establishing a clear career path for graduates, employers will soon gain the experienced professionals it needs further down the line.

In the meantime, employers must accept that it is not always possible to find the perfect candidate. They could fill a vacancy with a graduate who has only some of the skills needed, or someone currently working in a related area of the environmental sector, and accept the task of filling experience gaps. “While some period of adjustment may be required, this could easily be shorter than the amount of time many roles remain unfilled today,” Lockyer says. “Hiring people from other sectors that employ environmental professionals can only create greater career opportunities, fresh challenges and the loss of fewer candidates who seek career satisfaction outside the profession.”

In this week’s Nature (vol 434, p 214), Bob Snow and colleagues from the Kenya Medical Research Institute in Nairobi calculate that there were 515 million new cases of malaria worldwide in 2002.

This is almost double what they quote as the WHO’s official figure of 273 million cases. Snow claims that international efforts to control malaria are being damaged because the WHO is underestimating the problem.

The WHO disputes this analysis. The figure of 273 million comes from its 1999 World Health Report. The following year it revised its official estimate to between 300 and 500 million cases – roughly the same range as Snow’s 300 to 660 million – and that is the figure the WHO says it has been working with ever since.

“We are happy that the research is done but we’re less than happy with a comparison that uses an old and outdated estimate,” says Eline Korenromp, an epidemiologist at WHO in Geneva, Switzerland.

But Snow stands by his analysis. “The WHO would be hard pressed to produce evidence for that [later] figure,” he says. He says he used the 1998 numbers because they are based on empirical evidence.

A spokesman for Nature says: “We were simply unaware of [WHO’s revised figures] and it didn’t come up in the peer review.”