Simon Blackburn excorciates a recent government proposal in Britain, whose implications are, indeed, ominous for philosophy:
I have been reading the Arts and Humanities Research Council document called the Delivery Plan, 2008-2011....
[T]he document reminded me of the brag sheet I once caught a glimpse of when a rather porcine business man left his laptop open and facing me on a train. It was full of sentences like “I have considerable experience of progressing hands-on product delivery serving a variety of stakeholders in a fast-moving and challenging commercial environment”, which I interpreted as meaning something like I drive a van in Gateshead. But after the joke had gone on a little long, it dawned on me that the delivery plan was serious. They actually do think in terms like “Fostering knowledge transfer by our researchers with an increasing range of partners to produce greater economic and social impact”, and yes, they do scatter bold type everywhere to show just how serious and forward-looking they are....
Mere lapses of taste can be forgiven, but as in the movies when the slightly unnerving character with the gold tooth and the unfortunate wig suddenly reveals that he is a cannibal, so the AHRC soon reveal the black-hearted villainy behind the clowning. The essence of its delivery plan (also in bold) is that “over 2008-11 we will, via the new Block Grant Partnerships, move the percentage of our postgraduate budget falling within strategic themes from a low base to some 50%... A large number of the studentships we fund will fall within our strategic priority areas, such as the creative economy and heritage.” Not only the creative economy and heritage, but also lifelong health and wellbeing, and living with environmental change, and, well, just heaps of things that make up the challenging drivers and value chains piloted with our partner stakeholders. Not classics, or history (unless it is heritage), languages, literature, law or philosophy, of course.
We heard last week that the number of postgraduate studentships is to fall next year from 1,500 to 1000, although it would then go back up to some 1,300. That seemed bad enough. But now take away half of the support for anything that most people in universities would recognise as a subject, and we are down to between 500 and 650 students a year in classics, philosophy, languages, literature and the rest. That might be defensible if there were any evidence that there had been gross overproduction of MPhils and PhDs in the years before. But the AHRC itself admits that this is not so. 55 per cent of current AHRC graduates take up academic appointments, and 45 per cent go to key positions in the public and private sectors. One wonders what the equivalent figures will be for those who have done a PhD in heritage studies.
How bad will this be? Will it go through? Comments from UK readers and other knowledgeable observers are welcome.
