After pretending to listen, U of Kent senior management decides to close its successful philosophy department anyway

Philosopher Simon Kirchin, formerly of Kent, asked me to share the following:

Further to previous announcements of plans, the University of Kent has decided to close its Department of Philosophy.  It will take no new students from now on.  Existing students will be 'taught out' across the next two academic years.  The University has made provision for a (very) small amount of fte to carry out teaching from 2024-2026.

Colleagues at Kent are actively looking for posts elsewhere.

In recent times, the department achieved high student satisfaction scores and came fifth by GPA in REF2021, the UK research evaluation exercise.

This is really an ominous decision.  Kent philosophers were successful by all the relevant national metrics, and still got axed.