Storm Breaking Upon the University

"The defense of public universities is intricately tied to arguments that can establish the public value of the humanities. We need to get beyond the hand-wringing of those who believe only philistines require the humanities to be justified just as much as the meek reproduction of the government's own vocabularies of impact and value. We can and should remind the world that it is our classes that students want to take. Despite a decade of the rhetorical marginalization of our disciplines in the UK as not relevant there are more studying in the arts, humanities and social sciences (1,073,465 in 2008/9) than in the STEM [Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics] subjects (829,115) and they are growing at a faster rate (a 28% increase since 2001/2 as opposed to 20% increase for STEM). Indeed, in all likelihood, the arts, humanities and socials sciences are cross-subsidizing the more expensive STEM fields that teach fewer students in more resource heavy infrastructures and laboratories." [Read the rest of James Vernon's essay on 'The End of the Public University in England']

DEFEND the ARTS and HUMANITIES hopes you will read the whole of the article 'The End of the Public University in England', an important opinion piece by James Vernon (Professor of History, University of California, Berkeley) at our sister website Storm Breaking Upon the University.