Crises, Institutional Frameworks and Minority Subjects

The crisis in the humanities is not a new phenomenon. Every now and then there is talk of some sort of crisis in this area. Science subjects have also faced crises, as, for example, when a few years ago almost twenty physics departments closed in the United Kingdom and recruitment in computer science slumped following the dot-com bubble. What is new, in my view, in the present crisis is that a purely demand-driven system of education, with the introduction of much higher fees and a cut in the government teaching grant to universities, is now being consolidated in England. Commenting on the Browne Report on Higher Education Funding, Professor Stefan Collini has pointed out that consumer demand, in the form of student choice, will determine what is offered by service providers (i.e. universities), thus signaling "a redefinition of higher education and the retreat of the state from financial responsibility for it" (London Review of Books, 4 November 2010). As a result, specialisms of minority interest will be marginalized even further and starved of funding. While a few years ago in English universities these subjects (including modern Greek) used to receive additional state funding to keep them going, now student demand will determine the future of many of them. Though science subjects (the so-called STEM) will be protected, this will not apply to the humanities or social sciences, thus introducing a funding hierarchy in subjects at tertiary level. The funding changes in English universities will mean that only mainstream subjects will survive, but even they will be exposed to trends and fluctuations in demand. A higher education system based almost exclusively on student demand and numbers will not be able to offer such a wide range of subjects, and choice will be substantially restricted.

The expansion of the universities in terms of student numbers is also counterproductive for minority subjects and programs. While student numbers, particularly in the United Kingdom, may have risen dramatically in the last fifteen years, the number of subjects, courses, or modules has shrunk. One could argue that, paradoxically, the earlier elitism of university education in the United Kingdom (when around 10% of school leavers were going on to university education compared to more than 40% nowadays) supported minority subjects or specialized areas of research. The increase in student numbers has benefited the popular subjects, even within the humanities, and the resulting gap between mainstream and minority programs of study has widened, leading to calls for the closure of the latter in order to fund the former. The recent trend in British universities and elsewhere towards larger and more flexible academic units in order to promote interdisciplinarity and academic synergies will not be helpful either. This interdisciplinary facade is deceptive since it facilitates and conceals the closure of small departments and the transfer of resources to areas where there is greater student demand.

Furthermore, the aspirations of many leading Anglophone universities to become "global" or "world-class universities" does not encourage institutions to use their considerable resources to maintain or invest in a range of humanities subjects because the competition for world-class status is limited to profitable fields. Leading universities might be competing on a global scale in terms of scholarships, research grants, facilities, publications, or pay deals to staff, but not in terms of the range of humanities and social science provision offered. This kind of competition for global status is concentrated on key areas that can simply deliver student numbers from emerging economies or yield substantial research income and, therefore, does not help minority subjects. In short, the scholarly prestige of leading universities is not contingent on maintaining a good range of subjects, nor, in certain countries, does the autonomy of the universities encourage a national strategy on the teaching of minority languages in higher education institutions.

Any discussion about the future of Modern Greek Studies should be placed within the context of these wider developments. There may be national variations or local specificities regarding education infrastructure, national curricula, language policies, endowments, or fees, but we cannot ignore the fact that higher education worldwide is moving inexorably towards a...