Country Report 2010
United Kingdom
As I write the UK has just experienced a General Election which eventually resulted in a coalition between the Liberal Democrats (a left of centre party) with the Conservatives (representing a range of right and centrist positions). This attempt to yoke two rather different ideologies and policies in tandem has left Higher Education unclearer about its immediate future than it might have expected to be by mid-May 2010. One thing, however, remains clear. The prediction that, whichever party got into power, universities would bear their full share of cuts in public expenditure, is likely to remain unchanged. The public sector has been slower to feel the effects of the global financial crises than private business but many universities, of both pre- and post- 1992 foundation, are already planning for substantial staff cuts, and increased class sizes, while faced with growing numbers of applicants, some fearful of becoming a long-term unemployment statistic, and all hoping to beat the seemingly inevitable eventual lifting of the cap on university fees.
Nor is the last government’s prioritisation of scientific and technological subject areas likely to be reversed. The decision to fund teaching in these areas at a premium rate is one of a number of moves designed by the government to change the nation’s knowledge-base which it believes to have simple and obviously demonstrable links to its prosperity. Within the Arts and Humanities some subjects find it harder than others to demonstrate, or rather, quantify, their contribution to the economic and social welfare of the country. An English graduate’s abilities to question, criticise, evaluate, compare, clarify and communicate are fundamental to the functioning of a flourishing democracy, and, when successfully disseminated, all the less easy to trace to those individual encounters with texts, tutors and fellow students, that took place in the course of his or her studies.
Meanwhile changes in the criteria for research-funding are further loading the dice in favour of an instrumentalist agenda. [It is only fair, of course, to record the anxieties of many research scientists as they face a future where they fear that applied science will be privileged over theoretical, and projects with obvious industrial benefits over ‘blue skies thinking’.] Those seeking funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council are now asked, in line with their colleagues in the social sciences and sciences, to declare the ‘impact’ their research is likely to have on the wider community. Although one can only applaud the inventiveness of some colleagues, in their claims to be keeping entire publishing houses afloat with their latest monographs, it swiftly becomes clear that projects with a performance element or a web presence find the task of proving, or at least ‘measuring’ their worth easier.
The general trend of recent years to exert pressure on departments, research centres and clusters, and individuals to submit regular application for externally-funded research grants has had a variety of consequences. For specialists in minority areas, or small departments, it has offered the chance for collaborative support from other institutions, and it has forced researchers to give detailed consideration to the feasibility of their research projects. English specialists now find their expertise welcomed in interdisciplinary research groupings beyond the Humanities, and now engage, inter alia, with colleagues from geography, health care, law and medicine.
However the increased competition for a diminishing pot of gold also has a tendency to waste time and depress both researchers and those who are brought in to evaluate these bids. Projects better suited to a monograph are stretched into grandiose affairs trailing postgraduates in their wake, and monumental editions tend to gain disproportionate amounts of funding either because they seem a safe bet, or on the ‘why spoil a ship for a ha’p’orth of tar’ principle. For the lucky few, the rewards then have to be balanced against the problems involved in managing project teams and balance sheets. The ability to attract funding has become a more or less explicitly acknowledged requirement for promotion in many universities, and in some it is openly ranked above teaching ability as a sine qua non for appointment at the professorial level.
These external factors pressing on our subject discipline are being replicated in many other countries, and perhaps the most cheering symptom that all is not lost in Britain – or at least that things are not as bad here as they are perceived to be elsewhere – is the steady flow of colleagues from Europe and further afield who have joined our departments, bringing fresh perspectives and different expertise with them.
It has always been a notable characteristic of English departments to be protean, some splitting themselves into separate ‘Language’ and ‘Literature’ sections, others expanding to absorb film and drama studies; and the restructuring of faculties frantically being carried on up and down the land is leading to yet further amalgamations and shot-gun marriages. Perhaps the most significant growth over recent years has occurred in the areas of ‘Language’ and Creative Writing. The option many schools offer of taking a qualification in English language rather than, or as well as in literature, has substantially increased demand for Language studies at entry level. It is not quite so easy to chart the reasons behind the rise and rise of Creative Writing as a taught part of the discipline, although it would be tempting to quote it as evidence of the ‘impact’ made by the study of English literatures. Incidentally, the numbers of mature students attracted by such modules and courses, especially at post-graduate level, suggest the level of enthusiasm still to be found in the ‘wider community’ for literature, despite sporadic predictions of the death of the book. As with other areas that have sometimes taken shelter under the umbrella of an English department, Creative Writing is also often to be seen vociferously demanding independence. Again, the addition of staff actively engaged in the production of material that looks set to sustain our discipline can only be welcomed. Often the Creative Writing staff have been used to a less institutionally-governed but often financially precarious existence, and their amazement at the mixture of cynicism, supine acquiescence to bureaucratic demands, or endemic grumbling found amid longer-serving staff, can stimulate healthy debate at departmental meetings.
So, despite the increasingly heavy workloads, and the doom and gloom often to be found in departmental and faculty meetings, there is still no lack of applicants when a post is advertised, and most of us secretly count ourselves lucky to have lighted upon a profession where we are allowed to earn a living by a job we sometimes enjoy.