The problem with academia is that people are very adept at taking every quote out of context to suit their own ends. There is only one reference to business awareness in the entire 107 page report, as follows:

Employers expect postgraduates to have a range of skills that go beyond the discipline
which they have studied. These include business awareness, languages, numeracy and
quantitative methods skills. Higher Ambitions asks HEIs to demonstrate what they are
doing to boost the employability of their students and this should include postgraduates.
HEIs need to be more pro-active in providing postgraduates with the opportunity
to develop the core competencies they need to succeed in a competitive job
market.

Only that in a 107 page report! This strikes me as someone at best spinning and at worst simply lying.

There is no 'decree', no mention of MAs, no requirement to include "business awareness", just a suggestion that HEIs need to be better at providing their students with core competences.

It's like that Nussbaum article, Chirpy. It's almost as if people operate under the assumption that if they can imagine a particular horror being visited upon the humanities, then it must actualy be occurring.

I get it here all the time.

Most academics here have very deep, but very narrow knowledge and intelligence. They find it really hard to see beyond their own immediate needs and concerns.

Is there something deeper? Are academics so used to arguing the toss about everything that they argue just for the sake of it?

It does make me worry about the quality of research or thought that someone like the author of that article makes in their academic lives: do they really hang enormous ideas on the flimsiest of evidence, deliberately taken out of context?

The best academics, the most impressive ones I have come across are those with depth and breadth of intelligence. Even (dunno, especially?) here they are really hard to find.

You must be right

The Middlesex Philosophy Department hasn't just been cut. It's all in the academics' imaginations.

I'm talking about the article you linked to, and didn't make any reference to Middlesex.

Why make such a hostile point?

Chirpy wrote:
I'm talking about the article you linked to, and didn't make any reference to Middlesex.


As was I, in case that wasn't clear.

(later edit: although, let's be honest, I think it was pretty clear that's what we were both referring to and this is really just another example of the ad hominem defense tactic Nef seems to have adopted on this thread. Thus, whenever a specific example of injustice to the humanities/ corporatization of universities/ whatever is shown to be bollocks, he retreats into a claim that "well, look, there's a completely separate example of things turning to shit" in order to defend whatever general claim about injustices to humanities/ corporatization of universities the initial anecdote was meant to illustrate.

Thus:

A - "philistines are about to make universities teach business skills to philosohphy graduate students"

B - "no they aren't"

A - "Yeah, well Middlesex is closing a philosophy department, so that proves there are philistines".)

The article I linked to is an editorial by the Editor of the Times Higher Educational Supplement.

Maybe she is entirely misguided about what's happening in the University sector. maybe she is adept at reading between the lines.

The reason for the abolition of the department is not clear-you assumed it must be because of low undergraduate recruitment, presumably since in your view managements behave rationally at all times.

Other people have assumed that it is becasue of an attempt to drive through a pro-business agenda at Middlesex University. It was in that context that I linked to the THES editorial.

I think you're really allowing personal antipathy to weaken your argument here, Nef.

you assumed it must be because of low undergraduate recruitment, presumably since in your view managements behave rationally at all times.

Well, he didn't assume, he asked (while positing a suggestion) and as driving through a pro-business agenda would also be a rational action the snark wholly misses its mark. It may well be a profoundly misguided action, that doesn't make it irrational.

As to the defence of the THES editorial, it's basically direct appeal to authority. Of course she is good at reading between the lines, that is a crucial academic skill and she may well be right, but the actual evidence as put up by Chirpy and AG suggests she is over-stating the case.

I think you're right that the THES editorial can only be read in the wider context of what is happening in HE, and that does allow a more generous reading of the editorial than Chirpys though.

You are probably right Etienne. Rational as not the appropriate word.

However that doesn't alter the fact that AG's

"Shown to be bollocks" may be to his own and Chirpy's satisfaction, but not to mine- or the editor of the Times Higher edcuational Supplement's come to that..

When I cited evidence of the increasing business agenda for higher education AG said (and I paraphrase) "they say that all the time/they have always said that/it doesn't mean anything"

Well HEFCE have in places in this document defended research for its own sake.

Well my response is
"they say that all the time/they have always said that/it doesn't mean anything"

I think that it is relevant that Universities are no longer considered education. but part of Business Skills andInnovation. It's a paradigm shift. and it is through the prism of Buiness that the activities in Universities are now being judged. And that is why philosophy palaography, history before the modern era, and a number of other disciplines are being cut.

And AG has, not for the first time, caricatured my argument.

It's more like "here's a philosophy department being cut. Perhaps it has to do with the fact that universities are being asked to develop a pro-business agenda (as this editrial in the THES argues) and an explicitly Marxist philosophy department might inhibit this.

The article you linked to, Nef, made a wide case about the relationship between business and higher education. It actually didn't suggest that "the Higher education Funding council has decreed that every MA course in the country has to include an element of "business awareness" - that was your flourish.

Re: Middlesex, Etienne has it right - I have no idea why the administration took the course of action and was asking if anyone else knew. There is usually some kind of logic involved (not necessarily one I would agree with), but I'm always curious to see how the options are laid out prior to a decision being taken. Cutting a department - regardless of the field of study - is a pretty radical step.

There might be good strategic reasons to do it (cut a weak area in order to invest more resources in stronger areas), but you'd have to get a sense of how "weak" is defined and the only thing I can think of is weakness of student demand (weak demand is a pretty good reason not to offer something - there's neither a left- nor a right-wing case for spending money on a public service no one is using). Also, you'd want to see some comparative data for other departments to make sure that this one unit was in fact "the weakest", and that no other agendas were involved. I have yet to see data on this one way or the other, so I keep an open mind about it.

The only thing I would note is that with (apparently, according to one of those links upthread) only six full-time staff and a very large number of graduate students, they are either all Stakhanovites or they don't have much in the way of undergraduate teaching responsibilities. And in the humanities, since that's really the only way to bring in income (no matter how good your research rating), that really does matter. If you don't bring in the undergraduates and the tuition and funding dollars they bring in, then you have to make a very good case to the rest of the institution why your department is so special that others should subsidise it.

I'm not saying that's what happened. I don't know what happened. I'm just saying there is a possibility that this is what happened and therefore I restrain the rush to judgement.

If the Philosophy department is being cut because Middlesex wants to concentrate more on appealing to industry, it would of course be shocking.

If student numbers are down, then they should be able to reduce the size of the department to reflect reduced teaching demands.

I know that is not a pleasant task, but better than closing a whole department down. Now it may be that reducing the size of the department to the size that it justifies would make the department unviable. In which case Middlesex should be clear about the reasons and seek other solutions such as merging with other departments or offering the course jointly with another institution.

Of course Universities have been closing and opening departments for years in response to student demands. Not just in Humanities, but also in a lot of sciences such as Chemistry.

And in the humanities, since that's really the only way to bring in income (no matter how good your research rating), that really does matter. If you don't bring in the undergraduates and the tuition and funding dollars they bring in, then you have to make a very good case to the rest of the institution why your department is so special that others should subsidise it.


Not ne4cssarily true. Taught MA's, (especially those that attract Non EU students) other research degrees (MRes and PhD's (especially those that have block funding attached to them) and research grants have all, until very recently anyway, been the preferred sources of income. A market isn't allowed to operate since over-recruting at undergraduate level involves substantial penalties

I think there's also something problematic abot assuming that every time the government talks about employability that it's part of a "business agenda". Since the vast majority of students are going to unviersity to improve their chances of getting a job (that's not the only reason they go, obviously, but it's still a very significant one), an "employability agenda" is also a "student agenda". Hell, universities themselves have sold government the line that "higher education equals jobs" and that's how they've been getting the various funding increases tehy've have over the past decade. It's not (necessarily) an alien graft of an idea.

Now, I know this is difficult for many in the humanities to accept because they see their job not as producing skilled labour but as helping people learn to lead "examined lives". But when you think about it, this is a highly ahistorical position for the humanities to take. For most of history, in most of the world, humanities were a pre-requisite to studying other, more professional courses of study (mainly law, medicine and theology). Studying for a degree in "history" or "english" on its own would have made very little sense. There is an English (mainly Oxbridge) tradition of doing things like PPE and getting direct entry to the upper reaches of the civil service, but I think this is of late 19th century origin if not early 20th - and frankly it was part of a general pattern of social exclusion at universities. And as I say, in many parts of the world this model never existed in the first place. The humanties traditionally understood this deal.

It was only when the German-American university model began to spread like wildfire in the 20th century that people began to think that humanities departments should not be propaedeutic. But that model only works and only gets funded if you can show value to the state for your outputs (read Humboldt on this sometime). And that's something the humanities tend to have difficulty doing.

Most of the humanities graduates who are really successful (over here at any rate - I suspect but do not know for certain that it is the same over there) have in effect re-created the medieval univresity on their own time by taking humanities as a first degree and then going on to take law or an MBA, or whatever as a second degree. And they do this because employability matters to them as much as their love of learning for its own sake does.

Nefertiti2 wrote:
Taught MA's, (especially those that attract Non EU students) other research degrees (MRes and PhD's (especially those that have block funding attached to them) and research grants have all, until very recently anyway, been the preferred sources of income. A market isn't allowed to operate since over-recruting at undergraduate level involves substantial penalties

I agree that the inability of a market to operate here is a significant source of the problem. And I agree about the role of research grants - just that there aren't very many in philosophy specifically and so a great research record wouldn't necessarily mean much in financial terms.

Re: taught MAs, I can see where this would be the case, but I have always seen this as a way to get "extra" income. But how much income would 40-odd grad students get you? It seems to me that the financial health of any department rests first and foremost on undergraduates because that's where the numbers are. I always thought grad students and research are kind of "gravy" that give you income to do stuff above and beyond the quotidian, but not a substitute for basic enrolment-based funding. But perhaps I'm mistaken about this.

Petition; www.gopetition.com/petitions/save-middlesex-philosophy.html
Facebook group; www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=119102561449990&v=info

most of the humanities graduates who are really successful

That's the nub, isn't it?

Define your terms.

Chirpy wrote:

If student numbers are down, then they should be able to reduce the size of the department to reflect reduced teaching demands.

Maybe. There's a couple of issues there. One is how small a department can get before it simply becomes non-viable as a field of sutdy. Msex is apparently only at six profs now, which I would have thought was pretty close to the edge of viability. The second is whether or not, even if it's possible in theory to remain viable at a smaller size, your remaining academic staff could adequately cover the courses of the departing staff (could a logician teach political theory, for instance?)

Of course Universities have been closing and opening departments for years in response to student demands. Not just in Humanities, but also in a lot of sciences such as Chemistry.

Yes, but there's a difference in discourse. Non-humanities departments, when faced with closure, don't go around peddling wholly ahistorical guff about how their field of study is central to the mission of the university and has been since medieval times and (per Nussbaum) how their field of study is in fact criticial to the functioning of democracy itself.

Sciences will usually go on about their department being "in the national economic interest" or some such. This may equally be guff but somehow it seems less self-aggrandizing (to me, anyway - others may view this differently)

Nefertiti2 wrote:
most of the humanities graduates who are really successful

That's the nub, isn't it?

Define your terms.

Fair enough. In this case, because both students and governments are paying for university primarily (though, again, not exclusively) for enhanced employability, I'd use a definition like "people who rise quickly to the top of their chosen fields", or "people who don't experience unemployment or long spells of low income".

Judging by advertising campaigns in Tube stations and the rumblings I've heard, Philosophy courses for adult education do very good business. I suppose that's different to postgrad research, though, which seems to be Middlesex's main gig.

Middlesex, of course, has recently reaccredited schools such as this one: www.homeopathycollege.org/

Which would suggest that they're not above valuing financial gain over academic integrity.

Here you go, someone who knows what they're talking about.