Abstract

Today the purpose of a university education is under question. Should it provide technicians and workers for productivity and international competition? Should it be a liberal education, interdisciplinary and problem-solving, preparing informed subjects/citizens for democratic decision-making? Should it be private, focussed on vocational training, funded by tuition from the rich, in institutions founded by philanthropists or entrepreneurs? Should it be public, managed as a bureaucratic corporation, with a parafaculty of public relations and advertising specialists, a driver of global enterprise? Or should it be mentored like a guild or college by self-motivating and self-regulating professionals who have internalised the means and mechanisms of their disciplines? Have we moved from provincial institutions training local elites to global institutions recruiting international talent? From the perspective of the student, should it prepare for a professional workforce or prepare for a fulfilling life and a good society? Will it continue to prepare for both?

Ideological answers to these questions are rampant and global, not at all confined to Higher Education in the United Kingdom. As we go to press, a new government in the UK has offered détente on the Culture Wars and is attempting to reassure international students that they are again welcome. Yet such assurances arrive without the government committing to budgets for institutions ‘exiting the market’ (Hogan 2024, ‘UKRI plans for “scenario of a university exiting the market”’. Research Professional News/ Research Fortnight 4 September 2024). In October 2024, Fellows of the British Academy organized a private series of panels on ‘Recent Closures and Threats of Closure in the Humanities and Social Sciences: Opening Up’ with the goal of advising ways for universities to economise without losing essential aspects of education for a good society. Some of the presentations are collected here, with this Introduction providing some geopolitical, political economic, and historical contexts. This article is published in the thematic collection ‘On recent closures and threats of closure in the Humanities and Social Sciences’, edited by Regenia Gagnier.