Saturday, February 4, 2023
Market-Reporter
  • Home
  • Markets
    • U.S. Markets
    • Canada
    • Europe & Middle East
    • Emerging Markets
    • Asia
    • Latin America
  • Investing
    • Stocks
    • IPOs
    • Mutual Funds
    • ETFs
    • Bonds
    • Commodities
    • Currencies
    • Cryptocurrencies
  • Economy & Politics
    • Personal Finance
    • Spending & Saving
    • Retirement
    • Real Estate
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Markets
    • U.S. Markets
    • Canada
    • Europe & Middle East
    • Emerging Markets
    • Asia
    • Latin America
  • Investing
    • Stocks
    • IPOs
    • Mutual Funds
    • ETFs
    • Bonds
    • Commodities
    • Currencies
    • Cryptocurrencies
  • Economy & Politics
    • Personal Finance
    • Spending & Saving
    • Retirement
    • Real Estate
No Result
View All Result
Market-Reporter
No Result
View All Result
Home Spending & Saving

Novelists issue plea to save English degrees as demand slumps | English and creative writing

MtR by MtR
June 19, 2021
in Spending & Saving
0


Novelists including Mark Haddon this week accused the government of “baseless prejudice” against the humanities as they made an impassioned plea for universities not to ditch their English degrees despite a slump in applications.

By the January application deadline this year, 7,045 18-year-olds in the UK had applied to study English at university, a fall of more than a third from 10,740 in 2012, according to data from the admissions service Ucas. Experts say this is because far fewer students are now studying English at A-level. Over the same period there has been a boom in applications for subjects such as computer science, psychology and maths.

Staff at Cumbria University were told on 27 May that it would no longer take the students who had applied to start its English degree in September, owing to low numbers. The course website promises that students can explore literature in the Lake District setting that inspired William Wordsworth, Arthur Ransome and Beatrix Potter, “a landscape which has been a source of inspiration to generations of poets and writers”. Its Ambleside location makes it the “only university campus in the UK located in a Unesco world heritage site”, the site says. Staff were told the university would help the candidates to find alternative English courses elsewhere.

This month academics at Leicester University went on strike to oppose cuts to English jobs, and last summer Portsmouth University axed more than half its English department. With applications to study English declining further each year, academics fear more cuts will follow.

Haddon, whose novels include the multi-award-winning The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, said the education secretary, Gavin Williamson, was “clearly driven by an utterly baseless prejudice in favour of Stem [science, technology, engineering and mathematics] subjects and against the humanities”.

Williamson enraged many academics in the arts and humanities when he said in a speech in February that universities must focus on technical courses and filling gaps in the labour market “instead of pushing young people on to dead-end courses that give them nothing but a mountain of debt”.

The Lake District
The Lake District, ‘source of inspiration to generations of poets and writers’, but Cumbria University will not be taking English degree students this autumn. Photograph: Alamy

Haddon, who studied English at Oxford, said Britain was “already poorer” for the decline in English degrees. “English is about history, it’s about psychology, it’s about philosophy, languages, sociology, theology. It’s about what makes us human,” he said.

Despite arguing that English has a value that goes beyond money, he feels the government has ignored research from the British Academy showing that humanities graduates are just as employable as scientists and mathematicians. The academy found that of the 10 fastest-growing economic sectors, eight employed more arts, humanities and social science graduates than any other disciplines.

Related articles

Investing in bonds? Know the 8 types first before you make a foray

August 10, 2022

Times letters: Conserving energy and saving money – The Times

August 9, 2022

Haddon said: “You don’t need to declare English as a special case on account of some nebulous, impractical, spiritually improving quality which business-oriented politicians are too coarse to comprehend. It is a great degree on its own terms.”

Patrick Gale, the author of 19 novels and the Emmy-award-winning BBC drama Man in an Orange Shirt, also leaped to the subject’s defence. “English fosters our understanding of one another,” he said. “If more members of the current cabinet had English literature degrees, you can be sure they wouldn’t be cutting our overseas aid budget or so radically undervaluing the importance of investing in children whose education has been disrupted by the pandemic.”

Dame Marina Warner, the novelist and historian, said English degrees offered a “vast and rich repository of knowledge, insights and experience across time”.

She argued that understanding how people used language to influence others was more important than ever in an age of social media and disinformation. “Shakespeare’s Iago will teach you a lot about lying and persuasion and being turned around, misled, deceived by someone’s talk,” she said.

Marina Warner says studying English is more important than ever in an age of social media. ‘Shakespeare’s Iago will teach you a lot about lying’.
Marina Warner says studying English is more important than ever in an age of social media. ‘Shakespeare’s Iago will teach you a lot about lying’. Photograph: Geraint Lewis/Rex

English academics say much of the decline in applications to study the subject is driven by a matching slump in numbers doing English A-level. In 2012, English was the most popular A-level, with 90,000 students taking it. But in recent years numbers have plummeted. This summer 57,000 students will be taking English A-level, according to Ofqual’s latest figures – a decrease of a third since 2012.

David Duff, the chair of the English Association and professor of romanticism at Queen Mary, University of London, said: “English is not dying out. It’s still the fourth most popular A-level and it still attracts some of the brightest students. But that is definitely a challenging statistic.”

The English Association and others have been analysing what has gone wrong. Although there may be factors such as parental influence at play, they think the former education secretary Michael Gove’s radical changes to the English GCSE curriculum in 2017, part of sweeping changes designed to make exams more challenging, have done the most harm. Duff said: “Our research shows that the English language GCSE has been more problematic in putting young people off doing an A-level in English than any other factor.”

Duff also said the government’s “disproportionate support for Stem, at the expense of other subjects”, had been deeply unhelpful. “They are fostering this reductive narrative that you can measure the value of education with a calculator. The rhetoric from the government is all about Stem. But why does it have to be either-or? I took two maths A-levels and English and I loved them all.”

Alex Thomson, the head of the English literature department at the University of Edinburgh and chair of the University English umbrella group, said the government’s decision to decouple AS and A-levels – so that a year doing AS no longer counts as half an A-level – had also hit English hard. “It used to be the case that when students took AS-level English, a lot of them carried on and did A-level English because they loved it most,” he said.

Andrew Miller, the author of popular historical novels including Pure, said he was “delighted” that his daughter was about to start an English literature A-level and expected her to thrive as a result. “Stem subjects are vitally important, but the humanities are, if not the actual heart of a serious university, at least one of its ventricles. You can survive, I believe, with a single ventricle, but only just. You will not be well.”

Jo Grady, the general secretary of the University and College Union, which has been fighting the cuts, said: “If the government continues down this track, we could be seeing one of the biggest attacks on the arts and humanities in English universities in living memory. If courses close, current and future students lose out, and brilliant academic teaching staff risk being laid off.”

Cumbria’s vice-chancellor, Prof Julie Mennell, said that while the university had “reluctantly suspended recruitment” to English for this September due to low student demand, it was working on new options in the field of literary studies for future years, such as environmental writing. “In an area of such rich literary heritage, we are absolutely committed to ensuring we maintain an offer for a whole range of students, young and old, to study English literature,” she said.

Prof Henrietta O’Connor, the head of the University of Leicester’s college of social science, arts and humanities, said: “In line with other universities across the UK, we have seen a drop in student demand for English and have not been able to ignore this issue.

“Our English degree programme offers students the opportunity to study literature from the medieval through to the contemporary period; however, it is essential that we can manage our resources and activity efficiently and effectively.”

A spokesperson for the Department for Education said: “Our manifesto commitment is to drive up standards for all students, no matter what they study. High-quality provision in a range of subjects, including English, is critical for our workforce, our public services and is culturally enriching for our society.

“Progression is the key to our reforms and we have been clear that this is not measured on how much graduates go on to earn.”



Source link

Related Posts

Investing in bonds? Know the 8 types first before you make a foray

by MtR
August 10, 2022
0

Updated: 10 Aug 2022, 08:44 AM ISTTL;DR.Putting money in bonds is an interesting investment option, though not many are not...

Times letters: Conserving energy and saving money – The Times

by MtR
August 9, 2022
0

Times letters: Conserving energy and saving money  The Times Source link

Indian Hotels’ Q1 is strong, but investors may not check in soon

by MtR
August 9, 2022
0

The Indian Hotels Co. Ltd put up a solid show in the June quarter (Q1FY23). Occupancy and average room rates...

Turkey suggests saving Europe from energy crisis

by MtR
August 9, 2022
0

The Turkish authorities have proposed to save the European Union from the energy crisis with the help of an "energy...

Are We Past Peak U.S. Inflation?

by MtR
August 9, 2022
0

Consensus expectations are for headline CPI to come in at mom, yoy, with the Core CPI report expected to print...

Load More
  • Trending
  • Comments
  • Latest

Bank of England tells ministers to intervene on digital currency ‘programming’

June 21, 2021

Tips for checking smoke alarms during daylight saving time

March 12, 2022

GLOBAL MARKETS-U.S. stocks follow Europe up; Treasury yields rise, dollar firm

July 9, 2021

What will Durham County education bonds pay for? A full list

July 8, 2022
African currencies week ahead: Zambia's kwacha seen on back foot, Kenyan shilling up – Business Recorder

African currencies week ahead: Zambia's kwacha seen on back foot, Kenyan shilling up – Business Recorder

0
Maxum Foods releases Global Dairy Commodity Update for June

Maxum Foods releases Global Dairy Commodity Update for June

0
Letter: Perpetual bonds can help states fight hunger

Letter: Perpetual bonds can help states fight hunger

0
United Kingdom ETFs Are Riding the Re-Opening Momentum

United Kingdom ETFs Are Riding the Re-Opening Momentum

0

Investment in overseas real estate surges : The DONG-A ILBO

August 11, 2022

U.S. inflation CPI report, Wall Street, currencies

August 10, 2022

Alberta oil production set new record in first half of 2022

August 10, 2022

Industrial Lubricants Market to Reach $71 Billion by 2027.

August 10, 2022

Recent News

Investment in overseas real estate surges : The DONG-A ILBO

August 11, 2022

U.S. inflation CPI report, Wall Street, currencies

August 10, 2022

Alberta oil production set new record in first half of 2022

August 10, 2022

Categories

  • Asia
  • Bonds
  • Canada
  • Commodities
  • Cryptocurrencies
  • Currencies
  • Emerging Markets
  • ETFs
  • Europe & Middle East
  • IPOs
  • Latin America
  • Mutual Funds
  • Personal Finance
  • Real Estate
  • Retirement
  • Spending & Saving
  • Stocks
  • U.S. Markets
  • Privacy & Policy
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Advertise with us

© 2021 Copyright Market-Reporter

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Markets
    • U.S. Markets
    • Canada
    • Europe & Middle East
    • Emerging Markets
    • Asia
    • Latin America
  • Investing
    • Stocks
    • IPOs
    • Mutual Funds
    • ETFs
    • Bonds
    • Commodities
    • Currencies
    • Cryptocurrencies
  • Economy & Politics
    • Personal Finance
    • Spending & Saving
    • Retirement
    • Real Estate

© 2021 Copyright Market-Reporter