The announcement of the Canterbury Church of the University of Christ in Kent is to stop the offering English literature degree many hares running, most of them with that vice. The university said in effect that hardly anyone wanted to study English literature at the undergraduate level and the course was no longer viable. If you can’t do EngLit in the city of Chaucer and Marlowe, where can you do it?
The story of the archbishop is well known. EngLit into Wolf received at A level, with numbers going from 83,000 in 2013 to 54,000 in 2023, and there has been a decline at university even over the past decade, though Statistics It is discussed because the subject is taught at grade level in many ways, including creative writing and language. Overall, the subjects seem to be losing their civility appealwith only 38% of students graduating in 2021/22, up from nearly 60% between 2003/4 and 2015/16.
Tuition fees and the need to study the chosen subject to attract a substantial investment of students are likely to be after the fall. The dangerous the state of the money of the university is also leading to high cuts – hence the well-regarded loss book race to Hull next week. But most of it has to do with the widespread closure of arts and humanities departments – art, music, drama, dance – with institutions such as Goldsmiths, Oxford Brookes and Surrey shedding hundreds of academics.
EngLit could easily be seen as a target. Beowulf studied was no longer so lovable as when they paid for the state. Meanwhile, those on the Liberal side of the argument criticize Michael Gove’s 2013 career the reforms that were introduced in the period of the content of the heavy courses were assessed by the final tests. Successive Tory education ministers also emphasized science and technology, while laughing at the prospect of arts graduates.
Studying literature is good in itself. Virginia Woolf, who refused to go to university at her father’s request, saw books as a way of self-transcendence. The university must be devoted to rational inquiry and free understanding; it’s not about creating profitable drones and it’s unfortunate that the tuition fee has made the experience somewhat transactional. Courses should challenge students by emphasizing the decoding of texts on moving surfaces.
The Kent block coincides with the National Literacy Trust to announce showing that only 35% of 8 to 18-year-olds enjoy reading for pleasure — a drop of nearly 9 percentage points a year. Reading rates are falling, the gender gap is widening and it’s making its way from social media dominance to library closures and shrinking attention spans. (Let’s read something in this year’s brevity Booker Prize winner? (How did our mutual friend die?) Some school teachers suggest that Dickens be replaced with social media studies, but, as Evelyn Waugh Scoop Meets: “To the point, Mr. Copper.”
We should be concerned about the closure of the EngLit course at Canterbury. The universities are in an abominable state, and the new government has scarcely begun its Herculean task stabilizing sector This is more than a lack of training. It means a cultural change that risks leaving the next generation without critical, empathetic and intellectual tools equipped with literature. “There is no friend like a faithful book,” said Hemingway. Instagram influencers have confidence in you, not just you. We still need it Our mutual friend.