Chromatography is the undisputed backbone of the modern analytical laboratory, essential to everything from pharmaceutical development to environmental monitoring, food quality to criminal forensics and many other areas on which society relies. Yet, a troubling trend has emerged in UK higher education: the systematic erosion of deep, hands-on chromatography instruction and delivery of this key technique by non-experts. While the instruments in industrial labs become more sophisticated, the pedagogy surrounding them in many universities is becoming increasingly superficial. This "demise" is not a disappearance of the subject, but rather a decline in the rigor, fundamental understanding, and practical proficiency imparted to students. When compared to teaching institutions in other countries (particularly Europe and China) the situation becomes increasingly stark, and alarm bells should be ringing loudly within British industry, as it will start to stifle efficiency improvements, quality and innovations in almost every industry.

This article will focus on five key areas where improvements can be made to help chromatographers and also British Industry, but this could be applied to many other countries.

1. Technological improvements
One of the primary drivers of this decline is the technological advancement of the instruments themselves. Modern high-performance liquid Chromatography (HPLC) and Gas Chromatography (GC) systems are marvels of engineering, featuring autosamplers, AI-driven peak integration, and self-diagnostic software.¹

In many university settings, these advancements have led to the "Black Box" effect. Students are often taught to "load the vial and press start," observing the process through a computer monitor rather than engaging with the mechanics of the separation. Sometimes, teaching assistants run the samples on the instruments while a group of students observes, making the process even more removed. This results in;

• Reduced Troubleshooting Skills: When the separation is mediated by a "smart" system, students fail to learn the nuances of solvent compressibility, column packing irregularities, or the physical signs of a leaking fitting.
• The Loss of Intuition and Reduced Confidence: Educators argue that the "touch and feel" of manual injection—once a staple of the undergraduate lab—is being lost, replaced by automated processes that distance the student from the physical reality of the partition coefficient and leave hesitancy in their actions when using the technology.².

2. The Curriculum Squeeze: Breadth Over Depth?
University chemistry departments are under intense pressure to modernize their curricula, often at the expense of "traditional" analytical techniques.

• Interdisciplinary Competition: New modules in Green Chemistry, Data Science, and Materials Science are competing for credits. Consequently, the time allocated to separation science is often compressed into a single "Analytical Methods" course. In some courses the amount of time spent on chromatography over a three-year BSc Chemistry course is on average 3 hours compared to twenty times this for the top Universities in the European mainland.¹
• The "Service Discipline" Perception: Analytical chemistry is increasingly viewed by university administrations as a "service function" rather than a core research discipline. This leads to fewer faculty appointments specifically for separation scientists, leaving the teaching to generalists. This approach has started to impact data driven decisions from research groups who no longer employ chromatography experts. In the ‘omics field, essential for the development of new therapeutics, the lack of chromatographic experts as led to the experimental uncertainty associated with the chromatographic process not being considered, resulting in detector drift and retention time shifting generating new ghostly biomarkers.

3. The Industrial Ripple Effect: Efficiency and Risk
The erosion of chromatography expertise creates a "knowledge debt" that private industry is forced to pay. When graduates enter the workforce without a fundamental grasp of separation science, the impact is felt across several critical levels:

• The Economic Cost of "Trial and Error": A scientist who understands the theory can logically optimize a mobile phase. Without this, graduates rely on "one-factor-at-a-time" (OFAT) adjustments, leading to inefficient methods that take 30 minutes to run when a well-optimized system could do it in five. Students with a knowledge of statistical approaches to optimisation of systems can also fall foul of the lack of empirical knowledge leading to trying to mix immiscible solvents, having injection solvents strengths too high resulting in a lack of retention, poor column selection or even poor sample diluent.⁴
• Regulatory Risks and Data Integrity: In regulated industries (GMP/GLP), the ability to defend data to an auditor is paramount. If a scientist cannot explain why a baseline is drifting or how an integration parameter was chosen, the integrity of the data is compromised.
• The Burden of Corporate Retraining: Companies are increasingly forced to build internal "universities." It can now take 6–12 months for a new hire to become autonomous, as senior scientists must teach basics like column chemistry that should have been mastered during an undergraduate degree.⁵

4. Comparing Competencies: Fundamental versus.Software-Centric
The primary disconnect lies in the transition from physical chemistry to digital interface. The following table highlights where the specific skills are being lost:

5. The Anatomy of the Knowledge Gap
In the past, students were required to manually calculate the height equivalent to a theoretical plate (HETP). This taught them that there is an optimal flow rate for every separation, governed by the van Deemter equation 1.⁷

• A (Eddy Diffusion): Related to column packing homogeneity.
• B (Longitudinal Diffusion): Related to molecular spread over time.
• C (Mass Transfer): Related to the time it takes for the analyte to move between phases and the radial dispersion in the column.
• U (Average linear velocity of mobile phase)

Today’s industrial impact is a "slow-motion" inefficiency. Laboratoriess are full of instruments running at sub-optimal speeds because the operators don't understand the relationship between the average linear velocity (U) and efficiency (HETP). Furthermore, when "ghost peaks" appear, the software-centric operator assumes the instrument is broken, whereas the trained scientist recognizes a late-eluting contaminant or an aged organic modifier.

Conclusion: A Call for Pedagogical Restoration
The demise of chromatography teaching is not inevitable, but reversing the trend requires a conscious effort to balance automation with fundamental theory. Universities must prioritise "Inquiry-Based Learning," where students are given the agency to design methods rather than simply following a "cookbook" protocol. If chromatography continues to be treated as a “push-button utility” rather than a nuanced science, we risk a future where the instruments are smarter than the scientists operating them.

NGOs (Non-Governmental Organisations) associated with the separation sciences are trying to alleviate this situation and in particular the UK Chromatographic Society has introduced a 4-day training course geared at inexperienced chromatographers to try and address the points raised in this article. Specifically, students are actively encouraged to break down instruments and in a unique learning environment are given time to fully understand the importance of key variables in the separation process from the impact of physicochemical properties to the importance of the column characteristics in optimising the separation. Grass Roots events are run every year, and for students in academia several vendors (who also recognise the issues) sponsored bursaries are available meaning that there is no cost associated with the course. The courses are designed to be ‘industry relevant’, so those attending from academia are provided an insight of the nuances of chromatography in industrial setitngs, and for those attending from industry environments, an opportunity to better understand why parameter changes fundamentally impact their separations. The course tutors are leading experts in separation science and have many hundreds of research papers between them, along with many thousands of hours of teaching, with the feedback from students on this intensive course being incredibly positive.

Further information
For those interested in attending the next ChromSoc Grass Roots meeting (14^th-17^th August, University of Cumbria, Ambleside, UK please contact????

Website: https;//chromsoc.com

References

1. Thurow, K. HPLC 2025 Preview: The Present and Future of Automation in Analytical Laboratories; LCGC, 2025. Accessed May 2026.
2. Royal Society of Chemistry. Written Evidence Submitted by the Royal Society of Chemistry (GAP0048); RSC, 2017
3. Edge, A.; Ferguson, P. The State of UK Separation Science. The Column 2024, 20 (3), 5–8.
4. Molnár, I.; Rieger, H.-J.; Monks, K. E. Aspects of the “Design Space” in High Pressure Liquid Chromatography Method Development. J. Chromatogr. A 2010, 1217 (19), 3193–3200.
5. Jimenez, A. G.; Aaron, D. P. A. Identifying Skill Inequalities in Undergraduate Chemistry Laboratory Teaching. Chem. Educ. Res. Pract. 2025, (4), 926–935.
6. Lawlor, K.; Clausen, J.; Johnston, A.; Edge, A.; Wolff, K.; Castrignanò, E.; Couchman, L. A Review of Analytical Parameters in “Rapid” Liquid Chromatographic Methods for Bioanalysis: Can We Do Better? J. Chromatogr. A 2024, 1721, 1–12.
7. van Deemter, J. J.; Zuiderweg, F. J.; Klinkenberg, A. Longitudinal Diffusion and Resistance to Mass Transfer as Causes of Non-Ideality in Chromatography. Chem. Eng. Sci. 1956, 5 (6), 271–289

Biography

Dr. Tony Edge is President of the UK Chromatography Society, supporting the next generation of scientists to develop their skills. Prior to this he was a business analyst at TetraScience, helping scientists liberate, unify and transform raw data into more-than-FAIR, AI-native data, bringing AI-native data to life in a rapidly growing suite of next-generation lab data management solutions, scientific use cases and AI-based scientific outcomes. He has also worked as the R&D Manager at Avantor, heading a team of specialist scientists in developing next-generation stationary phases for HPLC. He has worked in both manufacturing and industry, having periods of employment at LGC and AstraZeneca as well as Thermo Fisher Scientific and latterly Agilent Technologies. In 2008, he was fortunate enough to be awarded the Desty Memorial Lecture for his contributions to innovating separation science, and in the same year also won a clinical excellence award from AstraZeneca. He is also a member of the permanent scientific committee for the International Symposium on Chromatography.

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