A response to: “How will Humanities and Social Sciences Fare in the new Funding Framework?” a panel discussion held on 19 December 2011 by The British Academy
The speakers were David Willetts, Minister for Universities and Science; Jonathan Bate, Provost of Worcester College, Oxford and Nicola Dandridge, Chief Executive of Universities UK.Chaired by Ann Mroz, Editor of Times Higher Education.
Is science funding ‘ring-fenced’ and humanities and social science funding cut because policy-makers think physics and economics are more useful than, say, French and media studies?The British Academy panel debunked this question on several grounds.The new funding framework differentiates disciplines according to the costs involved in teaching, not their intellectual content.It just so happens that labs are more expensive than classrooms.
The question is not just wrong, but wrong-headed.Humanities and Social Sciences may end up with more money under the new proposals.£9000 per student is more than “band D” subjects currently get from the government/fee combination.What is more the AAB proposal, allowing universities to recruit as many high-achieving students as they wish, may prove to be a cash cow since high-achievers often prefer humanities and social science subjects. As the Ministerfor Universities and Science, David Willetts, put it, the shift was not in the levels of funding but its source. A system previously supported by public/private funds in the ratio 60-40% will move to one of 40% public and 60% private, but the amount of money in the system will remain the same.Except, of course, in the matter of cuts to research council allocations which was dealt with under the rubric of “straitened times” and not much examined by the panel.
The biggest change of the new funding structure is not then in the amount of money in the system, but in the way that it is “earned”.Higher education will become more market-led than ever before, and pandering to market forces is alien to the values of a university.Or is it?
When talking about value, debate currently focuses on private benefits, such as employability and income-earning potential, and public goods such as “thriving creative industries”. Professor Jonathan Bate, deplored the dominance of econometric terminology in assessing educational value.This, he claimed, is the fault of civil servants, not politicians.Civil servants are increasingly recruited with economics degrees, staggeringly so, and thus they may lack sympathy for non-econometric conceptions of value. If so, then their myopia is contagious: Nicola Dandridge, Chief Executive of Universities UK, confirmed the dominance of econometric value by pointing out that the majority of undergraduate student choices are made in econometric terms, on the basis of potential employability and salary and so on.
If the Humanities and Social Science are not especially threatened financially, then perhaps the question might be better phrased ‘how might new funding structures damage the public service provided by universities’? One concern raised by Nicola Dandridge is that entirely market-led subject provision at university may lead to homogenisation of the courses offered. Consequently, as Jonathan Bate noted, our universities might fail to pre-empt or be prepared for the political and social issues of tomorrow, because they are not considered to be of mainstream importance by students selecting their courses now. In other words, do we really want our higher education system to be shaped by the UCAS decisions of 18 year olds who have not yet been to university? #marketfail
If this is to be the future of undergraduate courses, there seem to be two key issues in protecting the service to public good that our universities currently provide. Firstly, postgraduate study and particularly doctoral research take on a whole new level of importance; and secondly, the influx of the best international students needs to be maintained.
So firstly, if undergraduate education becomes homogenised under the new funding regime, then postgraduate study will increasingly become the locus of innovative courses.Such courses of study are the ones which meet the intellectual requirements of a rapidly changing society. If so, then undergraduate study will look a bit more like an extension of school, and postgraduate study will be the new (old) undergraduate system.Postgraduates will take on the burden of fostering a critical democracy and an innovative ‘knowledge economy’ normally left to the graduates of a diverse system. Will they want that burden in addition to mounting debt?
The second concern is the failure of the government to offer joined-up policy on higher education and immigration. If the UK is to continue to be a world leader in higher education provision and research, it needs to continue to attract the most curious minds and a healthy range of perspectives from across the globe, especially at postgraduate level. Tackling immigration via restrictions on student visas is short-sighted in this sense and will hit our higher education system in other places besides the pocket.
These two issues both lie at the heart of that broader, more nebulous public value of our higher education system. In fact, they are exactly what the founders of Cumberland Lodge hoped to tackle in setting up the experiment of this educational charity. They argued that universities were teaching students what to think, rather than how to think, and fought to provide a space for students of all nationalities and disciplines to consider the ethical implications of their studies. The basic principle is surely irrefutable – it can never be enough only to value one’s subject in narrowly defined terms. And yet trying to fit this contemplative exercise into the econometric terms used both by civil servants and consumer-undergraduates is virtually impossible.
Faye Taylor, King George VI Fellow
&
Owen Gower, Senior Fellow
