Disadvantaged students suffer as new subject ‘cold spots’ develop

Arts and humanities provision is at risk of “death by a thousand cuts”, with disadvantaged young people in particular becoming increasingly cut off from studying certain subjects, the British Academy has warned.

A map showing how “cold spots” have developed across the UK over the past decade has been created by the UK’s national academy for the humanities and social sciences to raise the alarm about the impact of shrinking options.

It shows that large parts of the country now contain few or no universities offering subjects such as theology, anthropology and languages, particularly when institutions with higher entry grades are excluded, echoing concerns that these fields are becoming the preserve of the elite.

Creating internship opportunities: showing employers the value in humanities and social sciences

Given that students from disadvantaged backgrounds are more likely to want to study close to home and tend to get lower grades, the changes mean that those looking to study these subjects often face a choice between travelling further afield or turning away from higher education in general.

“There was a fear that nobody had been monitoring the big picture of all the individual decisions across the sector around closing departments, running redundancy schemes or merging different courses or schools,” said Sarah Cowan, head of higher education and research policy at the British Academy.

“We were becoming increasingly concerned we would end up in a ‘death by a thousand cuts’ situation. In five or 10 years’ time, someone would say: ‘How did we end up here? We’ve got no provision in this subject or if you live here you can’t study this.’

“There is a lot of focus already at the level of individual subjects or individual institutions, but we wanted to make sure somebody was monitoring the overall trends in subject provision, in order to be aware of the risks.”

The map – which draws on a decade of data from the Higher Education Statistics Agency – shows that there was a contraction in the geographical spread in language courses in 2022 compared with 2011. For example, for French, cold spots have developed in large parts of eastern England and the south-east. Provision of subjects such as finance, law and sociology has grown in the same period.

Ms Cowan said the findings should be of note to the current government, with its focus on widening participation, as it presents a “worrying picture of who gets to go to university”.

For institutions, she said, the map showed the need to explore new models such as sharing resources and staffing, to ensure that subjects do not disappear entirely in the UK.

tom.williams@timeshighereducation.com