Studying history should not be only for the
elite, say academics
As two UK universities cut their courses, historians
fear others could follow
The author and historian Kate Williams
The author Kate Williams says history should be
available to all: ‘Otherwise we might as well go back to the Victorian period
when this sort of university education was only for elite men.’
Anna
Fazackerley
Sat 1 May
2021 08.30 BST
Some of
Britain’s biggest names in the education field of history are warning that the
subject could be at risk of becoming a degree for the elite, after two modern
universities announced plans to close down their history courses.
Aston
University in Birmingham and London South Bank University informed staff last
month that they would be cutting history degrees. Aston is consulting on plans
to close its entire department of history, languages and translation, and
London South Bank has said its degree courses in history and human geography
will not recruit from this autumn.
Experts
warn that with the government pushing universities to focus on perceived “high
value” Stem and vocational courses leading to higher salaries, more history and
other humanities courses could face closure. And with universities able to
expand their numbers unrestricted, Russell Group institutions at the elite end
of the sector are taking more students, while some modern universities are
struggling to recruit.
A
spokesperson for LSBU said that out of its 7,000 new students for the current
academic year “fewer than 40 enrolled in the courses that are closing”. At
Aston, the university is involved in a consultation with affected staff and the
University and College Union.
Prof Kate
Williams, a popular historical author and presenter on TV history programmes
including the BBC’s Restoration Home and Time Watch: Young Victoria, said:
“I’ve heard people say, ‘Well, history is protected at the top Russell Group
universities’. But that is a really dangerous route to go down. Are we saying
that if people don’t get 3As, they don’t deserve to do history?”
Williams,
who is a professor of public engagement with history at the University of
Reading, fears that working-class students who don’t want to leave home to go
to university, or can’t afford to, may find themselves unable to study the
subject. “It should be a degree that is open to all, and that means it must be
available to those who want to study locally. Otherwise we might as well be
going back to the Victorian period when this sort of university education was
only for elite men.”
Williams
said she was angry that the government is “pushing a vision that only Stem
subjects [science, technology, engineering and mathematics] matter and degrees
are only worthwhile if you immediately move to a job paying a very high
salary”.
“History is
so important,” she said. “It explores and tells us who we are. We should be
doing more of it as a country, not less.”
Michael
Wood, a professor of public history at the University of Manchester, who has
been presenting popular history TV programmes since the 1970s, agreed: “You
can’t understand the world without history. For universities not to offer that
possibility to people, and not to offer it to ordinary folks, the sort of
general audience I have been in contact with, is terrible.”
Sir Richard Evans.
Sir Richard Evans: in an age of misinformation, he
says, studying history gives people ‘the skills to look critically at evidence
and to distinguish fact from fiction’.
Richard J
Evans, a former regius professor of history at the University of Cambridge and
the author of bestselling books on the Hitler era, said: “History is an
absolutely core subject, along with English and modern languages, which are
also under threat in some of the modern universities.”
Evans argued
that Conservative MPs have attempted to portray history as just “a collection
of facts about the British past which you instil into young people to make them
patriotic”. He said a history degree should be about equipping students from
all backgrounds with the critical skills needed to navigate modern life.
“In the
present day, where we are overwhelmed by floods of misinformation and
conspiracy theories, it is more important than ever to have the skills to look
critically at the evidence and to distinguish fact from fiction,” he said.
Amal
Al-Azzani, a third-year history student at Aston University, who grew up in a
single-parent family in Birmingham and was the first generation to go to
university, said: “We are all so confused and shocked. I feel like the skills I
am learning in this degree, I could take anywhere. It’s about putting together
information and backing up an argument with evidence. The idea that history
isn’t an employable degree is just bizarre.”
Historians
want the education secretary, Gavin Williamson, to end his frequent threats
about pushing out so-called “low value” courses, and to publicly back
humanities subjects. Research by the British Academy has shown that of the 10
fastest-growing sectors in the UK economy, eight employ more graduates from the
arts, humanities and social sciences than other disciplines, with these
graduates working in areas including financial services, education, social
work, the media and creative industries.
Emma
Griffin, the president of the Royal Historical Society and professor of modern
British history at the University of East Anglia, was anxious that her degree,
which she said was very accessible and produced “rounded” graduates, must not
become the preserve of the middle classes. “For reasons of cost, many students
need to study at their local university. Understanding our own past shouldn’t
be a luxury pursuit for the privileged few, and we think that everyone should
have a history option.”
Griffin
warned that more history closures are already on the horizon. “There are more
in discussion, and there are academics at other universities who feel their
positions are threatened.”
She said
the removal of the cap on student numbers, allowing elite universities to
expand, made the demise of smaller history departments in less prominent
universities “inevitable”. “These aren’t blips or unfortunate mishaps, it is
the government’s policy working as it was designed to,” she said.
Unlike
subjects with expensive kit or laboratories, expanding a subject like history
is a relatively cheap way for a successful university to increase its income
from £9,250 a year fees. But Griffin said that cramming more students in has
negative effects on the degree. “A history department cannot suddenly absorb
lots more students without an impact on quality. Universities won’t employ new
permanent teaching staff for a trend that might prove temporary, so inevitably
you just get a casualised workforce managing the extra teaching workload, as
well as a lot of stress and overwork amongst the existing staff.”
Prof
Catherine Fletcher, an expert on Renaissance and early modern European history
at Manchester Metropolitan University, said: “History colleagues at more than
one Russell Group university have told me of the stress they are under with
soaring numbers of personal tutees and lecture theatres packed to the rafters.”
She added:
“This gives more choice to some students, but leaves others from less
privileged backgrounds with no options at all.”
The
University and College Union is fighting the closures at Aston and LSBU, as
well as other proposed humanities job cuts at universities including Chester,
Leicester and Hull.
Jo Grady,
its general secretary, said: “Unfortunately, it looks as though the
Conservative government only values education in crude economic terms. We would
expect vice-chancellors to defend courses that support students to engage in
critical thought. Yet too many are happy to throw students, staff and their
local community under the bus by cutting education provision.”
She added
that academics and parents must fight back against the idea that “only those
who are privileged” can pursue non-vocational courses like history, while
“everyone else must only think about employability when engaging with
education”.
The
spokesperson for LSBU said: “Decisions around the courses we offer to
prospective students are taken very carefully. We consider how they provide
students with the skills they need to enter high-quality jobs or further study,
previous enrolment levels and how they support social mobility and student
success.”
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