Pressure on History Flashcards
Commodification of Education
Dearing Report 1997 - students identified as principle customers of universities
Tuition fees 1998
£3000 fees 2004
Browne Review 2010, Dept of Education - increase in tuition fees by 3x
Politicians
Tony Blair, speech to US Congress, 2003
‘there has never been a time when… except in the most general sense, a study of history provides so little instruction for our present day’
Charles Clarke, Br Secretary of State for Education - ‘I don’t mind there being some medievalists around for ornamental purposes, but there is no reason for the state to pay them’
Donald Trump has proposed eliminating both the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities, in a move that would see the worst fears of arts groups around the US realised.
Established 1965 when Johnson signed legislation saying any “advanced civilisation” must fully value the arts, the humanities, and cultural activity.
Academics
Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man
‘What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.[1]’
University dept closures
University of Sussex
axed British history before the 18th Century and European history before the 20th century bc low enrolments made them unsustainable
University of Middlesex closed Philosophy department, announced 2010. Despite fact it was the uni’s highest-rated research department in the 2008 RAE
Cuts
End of direct government funding for arts, humanities and social sciences at English universities from 2012
Marketisation of education
Thatcher - 1981, 5-year run-down period announced. University Grants Commission (UGC) to take 13% real-terms cut
1987 Croham review of UGC, replaced with new model abjuring subject-specific planning in favour of block grants to institutions, on the basis of ‘selectivity’ exercises which would apply efficiency and market tests to institutions
1989 UGC replaced by new set of HE funding councils
Research Assessment Exercise (1989)
Research Excellence Framework (2014)
To create market competitions for the distribution of funds and league tables for students to make informed decisions as consumers
Impact Agenda
Funds to hums distrib through Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and British Academy
almost all funding directed to research areas identified as strategic priorities
Research Councils UK (RCUK) definition of impact:
‘the demonstrable contribution that excellent research makes to society and the economy’
‘declinism’
The postwar economic miracles experienced by Germany, France and
Italy—largely fuelled by their relatively late transfer of populations
from rural to urban occupations, such as Britain had experienced a
century or more earlier—were perceived in Britain not as convergence
or ‘catch up’ but as Britain’s relative economic decline.
CP Snow, The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution, Rede Lecture at Cambridge May 1959 - blamed humanities for British failures in economic growth
1964 - new PM Harold Wilson promised to bring the ‘white heat’ of the tech revolution to bear on Britain’s ills. CP Snow elevated to House of Lords
In the media
Cohen, 2012, writing in Forbes.
To Boost Post-College Prospects, cut Humanities Departments.
Utilitarian. Rigid functionalist view - if not getting job in degree field, pointless. Particularly as 100 000 graduates in US in jobs not requiring degree
‘Those who still wanted to study zoology, anthropology, philosophy, art history and humanities could read the books during their Starbucks barista work breaks’
