Will 2024 be the death of humanities education in the U.K?

Following the proposed closure of several university departments, Oliver Cooney conducts an autopsy on our recently deceased education.

Photo via Wikimedia Commons

Growing up is universally marked by the sinking of the myths that cushioned childhood. Whether that is the myth of our parents’ invincibility, or the myth of a universal guidebook to first-times, in losing these beliefs we lose the stories which have always sheltered us in reassurance. It unveils the reality of adulthood in the UK: surviving, adrift, in a sea of uncertainty.

Though I am absolutely not British, I spent much of my girlhood here. In my second year of uni, I lived in a cluttered house with three girls who remain like sisters to me. That year had some of the fairy-dust of a poignant Hollywood teen movie: making stupid mistakes and being loved more because of them, gaining personal power away from my motherland and swelling with hope for my next adventure. But life is rarely so formulaic. That summer I applied to work and live in a hotel on Jersey, the largest of the Channel Islands which is draped in monuments to British colonialism. Closed in by its blue shores, closer to France than to Norwich by a long way, the heatwave of those months scorched my naivety. Adulthood, I learned there, was a little more complicated than uninhibited freedom. It also required self-protection and an awareness that my own innocence was hazardous.

The motif of adulthood as a relentless eroding sea is deeply felt in Charlotte Wells’ Aftersun (2022) and Molly Manning-Walker’s How to Have Sex (2023). These women are among a new set of British filmmakers who have revolutionised the coming-of-age genre with a new palette. Less dazzling with youthful optimism, these films have the patina of memoir – looking back at adolescence, rather than swimming in it, from an adult lens that is still searching for lost order. Reflecting a nation where the most vulnerable are the most neglected, with an unstable economy and untrustworthy leaders, where individuals seeking safety are routinely abandoned, these British films take the collective nausea of the UK abroad. The cultural anxiety they depict goes beyond their deeply personal and individual coming-of-age narratives. What we see on screen and recognise in ourselves are those moments where the people, the stories and the hopes that give our lives meaning as children and promise for tomorrow are lost to an irretrievable depth. We must learn to float in the vicious tide. The cracks in the culture are exposed and undeniable in the low and bright sun.

“If the Conservative government’s attempt to choke out university subjects is fuelled by little return on employment, perhaps they should loosen their grip on the humanities.”

While the data showed a significant impact of the Oxford reputation on humanities graduate outcomes, a report by the Higher Education Policy institute found wide-spread support for their conclusions. They reported that 8/10 of the fastest growing sectors (including financial and legal services and the information and communication industries) employ more graduates in Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences (affectionately contrasted to STEM as AHSS) than any other discipline, with strong correlation between skills valued by employers and those produced by AHSS education. If the Conservative government’s attempt to choke out university subjects is fuelled by little return on employment, perhaps they should loosen their grip on the humanities.

This is especially true given the government’s aim to expand their understanding of value. The Department for Culture, Media, and Sport’s Culture and Heritage Capital programme was launched under the Conservatives in 2021 and seeks to examine the social and cultural benefits of institutions alongside their economic value. For humanities, their output in this domain is undeniable. Researchers at the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science, despite opting for an alternative acronym, SHAPE (Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts for People and the Economy), found that these subjects have played a major role in driving regional development and regeneration. From the use of literature and public performance to platform marginalised communities to the revitalisation of minority languages such as Welsh or Gaelic, SHAPE research has significantly enriched UK culture. Their report also highlighted the importance of SHAPE in collaboration with STEM research. Pointing to several examples of multidisciplinary collaboration, it indicated that the humanities and social sciences played a crucial role in innovative scientific research, including major collaboration between the social, physical and medical sciences. By the Conservatives' own novel conception of value, then, SHAPE subjects are invaluable.

Though it is not just the Conservatives who are providing (albeit, disguised) hope. With a general election looming, the Labour party have put forward explicit support for education in the arts and humanities. In a document setting out their major missions, should they be elected, Labour championed “subjects like music, art, sport or drama, that build confidence and skills.” While they did not clarify how this would influence their policy decisions, they criticised the Conservative party for having “squeezed out” creative and vocational subjects.

What the Labour party has been clear on, however, is that they will no longer be pursuing the abolition of university tuition fees. This controversial change in policy was announced by Labour leader, Keir Starmer, last May, and aimed to support universities, which are primarily funded through tuition fees. Yet with the costs of running a university ever increasing and building pressure from university staff unions to raise wages, it is unlikely that home tuition fees alone will be sufficient. UK student fees are currently capped at £9,250 per annum, leading many institutions to become increasingly reliant on international students, for which there is no limit. This reliance has been endorsed by government policy, as the International Education Strategy put forward by the departments for International Trade and Education seeks to increase the number of international students annually moving to study in the UK to 600,000 by 2030. The average international student tuition fee is between £10,000 - £20,000 per year, and rests neatly between £30,000-40,000 for many Oxbridge courses. With few countries offering feasible loans for overseas education, the only internationals who can access British education are those at the top of the socio-economic ladder. An increased reliance on international admissions therefore not only exacerbates the barriers which home students are facing, but also deepens economic inaccessibility on an international scale.

But tuition fees only account for 52% of university funding. The rest is a melange of business partnerships, research grants, and grants from funding bodies. For the arts and humanities, this is deeply concerning, as there are simply far fewer of these than there are for STEM subjects. Significant funding for humanities research previously came from the EU, yet since Brexit, UK universities are no longer able to access many of the funding pools. Those which they can, such as Horizon Europe, are geared towards research in technology and industry, with a major focus on tackling climate change. According to a report by the Higher Education Policy Institute, this leaves “significant uncertainties about future funding” for the humanities. Operating primarily as research institutions, if universities cannot fund research in these areas, they will be forced to shut down their departments and programmes, and this is what is happening across the UK.

Whether you call them AHSS or SHAPE, the issue facing our non-STEM subjects is, above all, one of funding, and this lack of funding is borne of misinformation regarding their usefulness. Their impact on British culture and burgeoning attractiveness in employment is hard to ignore, and in fact the rhetorical skill employed by politicians to suggest otherwise is one primarily cultivated by a humanities education. Without having written countless essays on jurisprudence as an undergraduate, perhaps former Education secretary, Nicky Morgan, would not have been able to so powerfully claim that humanities “were useful… now this couldn’t be further from the truth.”

“It is undeniable that the current economic downturn poses major societal challenges, and funding the arts and humanities may not be everyone’s first priority.”

It is undeniable that the current economic downturn poses major societal challenges, and funding the arts and humanities may not be everyone’s first priority. But if we do not provide them with the necessary life support, it is unclear if our literature, languages, and culture departments will blossom again during our economic up-turns. At present, the burden to save these faculties is on the staff working within them, but if we all begin investing in them, perhaps 2024 will not be the death of the humanities, but instead, it will be their re-birth.