Friday 12 March 2010

Britain: The Disgrace of the Universities

A link to a thought provoking, if pessimistic article by Anthony Grafton on the New York Review of Books Blog about the changes going on in University funding and research priorities in the UK, specifically a systematic underfunding of slow, serious humanities research and teaching. From the comments it sounds like this is something being felt around the world. Interesting to read a couple of comments dismissing what we would call "learning hubs".

"Administrators have responded not by resisting, for the most part, but by trying to show that they can “do more with less.” To explain how they can square this circle, they issue statements in the Orwellian language of “strategic planning.” A typical planning document, from King’s College London, explains that the institution must “create financially viable academic activity by disinvesting from areas that are at sub-critical level with no realistic prospect of extra investment."

http://blogs.nybooks.com/post/437005501/britain-the-disgrace-of-the-universities