You might think that a university philosophy department facing closure in Hull is of as much interest to the average person as the shutting of a butcher’s in Wolverhampton is to a vegetarian in Totnes. There are almost as many universities as high streets now, and for every closure here there’s an opening somewhere else.
But the events unfolding on Humberside are symptomatic of a deep malaise affecting not just universities but the wider culture. The crude pursuit of what is “practical”, “efficient” or “useful” is threatening everything of value that isn’t evidently profitable.
Philosophy has been taught at Hull ever since the University opened in 1928. The department has no problem with recruitment and has a good faculty. Because humanities courses are so cheap to teach and student fees so high, there is no conceivable way it could be losing money. In a letter to colleagues, Kathleen Lennon, emeritus professor of philosophy, insisted: “Philosophy at Hull is financially viable – providing a healthy return for the university.”
So why is the university not accepting any more joint honours students and publicly entertaining the possibility “that we will not be recruiting new students” in 2019? A statement by Jeanette Strachan, the university’s registrar, to the local newspaper suggests some worrying answers. Strachan said the university sought to offer students “a high-quality academic experience and ensure that their qualification holds value over time”.
The word that screams out of that sentence is “value”. The implication seems to be that a philosophy degree does not provide a sufficient financial return for those who “invest” in it. This impression is reinforced by Strachan’s statement that the university “meets the needs of our students, research and business partners”. The inclusion of that third party would baffle the thousands of people who have graduated with philosophy degrees without ever catching a sniff of a “business partner”, let alone receiving any help from one.
You could easily demolish this economically reductive case on its own terms, as the British Philosophical Association has done in an open letter to the university protesting against the proposed cuts. It points out that “philosophy degrees equip students with a wide range of highly valued and sought-after skills, and there is compelling evidence that graduate employers have a high regard for philosophy degree-holders”.
The BPA is surely right to plead with the university in the only language it understands, insisting there is “robust evidence of the value of philosophy”. But we should not let the bean-counters who have captured too much of higher education set the terms of the debate. In a truly philosophical spirit, we should question the meaning of “value” that they are using as if it were common sense.
That’s what the pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Thales of Miletus did in the sixth century BC. Fed up of being told that he was poor and therefore his learning was useless, he applied his analytical skills to the climate and the economy and then bought up every olive press in town. When the bumper olive harvest came, as he had foreseen, the presses were in huge demand, he had a monopoly and made a killing. Thales pulled off this stunt not to earn money but to prove a point. Someone of his intellect and ability could devote themselves to getting rich if they wanted. But he valued wisdom and learning more. His lack of wealth did not reveal a personal flaw but a justified choice about what he held most dear.
People who choose to study philosophy are heeding Thales’s message. They could choose to study a course with a more reliable financial payoff. But their “investment” in three years of philosophy is not designed to maximise financial yields. This makes them wiser, not dumber, than those who allow money to entirely dictate their choices. Whereas money is only a means to an end, the pursuit of learning is intrinsically rewarding.
This is not special pleading for philosophy. The same argument holds for innumerable other subjects which don’t have any direct economic benefit. I always cringe when people quote Socrates’s line “the unexamined life is not worth living” as though it were an argument uniquely for philosophy. All the humanities, arts and social sciences have a role in helping us to live examined lives. If we cannot find spaces for them in our universities, education becomes nothing more than professional training, churning out people who can help run society efficiently but none who routinely and thoroughly ask what all that efficiency is in the service of.
The threat at Hull reflects a lamentable shift in education towards precisely this functional view of what universities are for. But it also reflects a crudely utilitarian worldview that infects much, much more. You see it manifest whenever arts funding is under threat or when the evident inability of GDP growth to capture what most matters fails to translate to concrete steps to replace it with better metrics. That’s why Hull’s fate is all our fates. Today, they’re coming for philosophy. Tomorrow, they’ll come for something else that isn’t designed to turn a profit.