Universities across the UK are under threat. One in four leading UK universities are preparing to make staff redundant, close departments, and “restructure” to plug their finances.
Eighty-eight of the total 166 universities in the UK have announced redundancy or voluntary severance schemes, according to the University and College Union. This might be of little consequence to those outside the hallowed grounds of academia, but it’s not just jobs that are at stake: it’s the entire preservation of our arts and culture sector.
The current crisis in higher education has been a long time in the making. In 2015, Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne removed the cap on the number of students a university could recruit. This meant that the larger, more established universities could hoover up all the students they may have rejected before, which then affected smaller institutions who saw their numbers dwindle.
Before tuition fees were tripled in 2012, university courses were heavily subsidised by the government – once upon a time, higher education in the UK was entirely funded by the government. The hike in fees shifted the cost onto the student, and effectively turned them into consumers, and universities into a product.
Their income has been steadily eroded since 2017, when the Conservative government froze fees at £9,250 and didn’t allow them to increase in line with inflation.
This damage was compounded by last year’s visa changes, which have resulted in a severe decline in the numbers of international students coming here to study. According to a report published by the Home Office, international applications have dropped by 14 per cent in the last year alone.
So now jobs, courses and entire departments are at risk of closure.
And right on the front line of this are the humanities, who are being disproportionately targeted for closure and job cuts.
One of the effects of the tripling of tuition fees has been a focus on vocational courses and STEM subjects. The humanities are now seen as the “soft option” and consequently they are front of the queue when it comes to departmental cuts. This is an act of grotesque cultural vandalism and one that will affect all of us. If we are not careful, the entire arts and heritage sector in the UK will be irreparably damaged.
I was a lecturer for 14 years. Students stalked, harassed and humiliated me
Read MoreI worked at a UK university for 14 years as a lecturer in literature and history. Our history department was closed in 2019, with almost all the historians employed there losing their jobs. I left in early 2024 when a voluntary severance scheme was opened for the literature department as well. Now that scheme is open across the university, and everyone is bracing themselves for what is to come.
When it was announced that the history department was closing, it shocked me to my very core. The reason given was that student recruitment was not high enough. It didn’t matter that the university was actually operating with a cash surplus at the time, or that these were cheap courses to run, or even that the history department had been integral in preserving and researching local history within the community for the last 20 years.
I am old enough to remember when it was important for a university to just have a history department and somewhere to study literature, and I’m not that old. Seriously, what self-respecting research institution doesn’t have a history department? I can’t tell you how degrading and humiliating it is to have to explain to a redundancy panel why history is not a “low value” subject. But as it turns out, these early closures at my institution were only the flashing lights on the dashboard of a sector that was about to implode.
Cardiff University is the latest in a long list of universities that have announced closures, the majority of which are in the humanities: ancient history, modern languages, music, religion and theology are all on the chopping block.
Last year, Goldsmiths, University of London was hit with industrial action after it was announced plans for job cuts in history, anthropology, English and creative writing, music, theatre and performance, visual cultures, and media, communications and cultural studies.
The University of Kent also announced closures in art history, music, philosophy and religious studies. Redundancies or closures have now taken place in humanities departments at Leeds Trinity, Roehampton, Sheffield Hallam, Wolverhampton, Aston, and the University of East Anglia. In fact, according to the Royal Historical Society, since 2020, 39 history departments alone have reported cuts to staffing levels.
You might be thinking, so what? When it comes to universities and academics, the perception is often that we are all a bunch of milksop leftie whingers who issue trigger warnings with our reading lists, and want everyone to do “David Beckham Studies”. (There has never been a degree in David Beckham Studies, by the way. Staffordshire University looked at David Beckham in a module for a degree in Sports Studies.) But you should care. We all should.
Academics and universities are not just teaching institutions, they are centres of research. Most academics are expected to produce original research as part of their contract, and if we lose them, we will lose this too.
If I were to ask “What makes you proud to be British?”, I imagine reactions would vary wildly from patriotism to a sardonic eyeroll, but if I really pushed you to give me an answer, I would put money on many of your answers being the very subjects that are currently under threat at our universities. Our history, theatre, music, language, literature – our culture.
I’m proud of these things too! I love our rich and often baffling history. I love it so much I devoted my entire career to it, and I wouldn’t have been able to do that without the higher education system. From the Tudors to the Teddy Boys, bring it on! But the survival of these subjects is hugely dependent on universities and the academics they employ to study and research them.
Take history, for example. Yes, of course you don’t need to work at a university, or even have a degree, to enjoy learning about history. But when it comes to producing original research, to reading and translating manuscripts in the archives, to excavating ancient sites, to preserving artefacts in museums, and unearthing and communicating new information, this is the work that academics do. Documentaries, films, and a great many books are largely based on the pioneering research done by academics in universities.
Take it from me, there isn’t a lot of money in history. You can’t go to a job centre and apply to be a historian. There are a few exceptions, but in general, you have a career in history through academia, because the university is paying you a wage to study it. Even those who work in museums, galleries and heritage sites have academic qualifications to do so. Historians, like me, who make a living writing and podcasting about history, are usually university-trained.
Is that elitist? Maybe it is, but that’s the system. Unless you have the finances of a billionaire, you are going to struggle to raise funds for your own archaeological dig without the backing of a university. What is elitist is that the majority of universities who have announced mass redundancies and department closures are not the older, “red brick” institutions, but the former polytechnic, post-1992 institutions.
Typically, the student demographics at these universities are those from more impoverished backgrounds, with many being first generation university students. When the history department was closed at my post-’92 university, in one of the many meetings with management, we were flatly told that these subjects are now only being taught at older universities, so we shouldn’t try and compete.
I still rage at that comment years later. Working-class students make up around 20 per cent of undergraduates at the 24 Russell Group universities, while less than four per cent were entitled to free school meals. Should the humanities only be the preserve of the social elite? Should the working class kids just stick to vocational degrees and apprenticeships?
I didn’t get into a red brick uni. If the former polytechnics didn’t offer history courses, I wouldn’t have stood a chance. Targeting humanities degrees at the former polytechnics will render these subjects inaccessible for many, and we should all be paying more attention.
The previous Conservative government was openly hostile to the study of the humanities. It was Rishi Sunak who announced plans to make it mandatory for students to study maths until they are 18. He also threatened to put a cap on “low-performing degrees”. Those of us in the sector suspected this was simply a coded way of saying the arts.
Now, we seem to have a Labour government that appears indifferent to the chaos unfolding before their very eyes. Not only has Labour abandoned its pledge to scrap tuition fees, but Keir Starmer has adopted a fingers-in-ears approach to the unfolding crisis in higher education and is doing nothing at all.
I know that it is hard to rally support for universities when you look at the help needed in the NHS and other public services, but higher education needs government intervention now to prevent any more culling of jobs and courses.
Bring back the cap on student numbers to help a more equitable division of students across the sector. I doubt we will ever see free higher education again, but government subsidisation is needed if the UK’s research and arts sector is to survive.
The UK university sector is truly one that we can all be proud of. The research produced there is world-leading. If we lose these courses, we will lose more than thousands of devoted and pioneering academics. We will create a system where only the wealthy and privileged get to study the very subjects that make Britain what it is.
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