Universities are facing a financial crisis, according to the Times, with arts and humanities degrees being targeted for closure as demand tanks. Here’s an excerpt:
Three leading institutions are understood to be in serious peril and ministers are being urged to introduce an emergency rescue package to avert “catastrophe” and prevent bankruptcies.
The Government is considering merging one medium-sized university with another and is drawing up plans to “tackle problems within the sector”.
This week, Bridget Phillipson, the Education Secretary, is expected to appoint a new interim head of the Office for Students, the regulator that ensures students get value for money and upholds standards of education, to spearhead the recovery.
It has forecast that 40% of England’s universities will run budget deficits this year and warned of closures and mergers. In a sign of the scale of the crisis, a senior Whitehall source said that it “has been at the top of a list of challenges inherited from the last Government”.
Last week, the University and College Union (UCU) held talks with Phillipson and Jacqui Smith, the Skills minister, to urge action to save jobs.
Jo Grady, its General Secretary, spelt out her concerns to them in a letter. “Anything short of an emergency rescue package for the sector will be insufficient to stave off catastrophe,” she wrote. …
Goldsmiths’s proposed redundancies included half of the History and Sociology department and a third of all English and creative writing academics. …
At Winchester, which describes itself as “the university for sustainability and social justice”, jobs have been lost at departments including the Climate and Social Justice Institute.
Robert Beckford, the university’s only black professor who was the director of the institute, was made redundant this month. He said universities that axed such subjects and focused on vocational subjects could become “little more than glorified FE colleges”.
Arts and humanities degrees are being targeted for closure because lucrative overseas students who pay high fees prefer to study science and technology degrees. …
Official figures released on Friday revealed another slump in the number of both U.K. and overseas students applying to start degrees in September. …
Kent said it had reduced a £25 million deficit to £17.5 million. About 50 staff have been shed by voluntary redundancy, and courses including art history and journalism have been cut.
Worth reading in full.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.