An excellent article on the corruption of academia that will result from the recommendations of the Browne Review, and the Con-Dem government's latest wheeze - to make the AHRC (Arts and Humanities Research Council) dedicate some of its budget to studies on the 'Big Society'. They really don't like the arts, do they?
Pears describes the way in which research in the arts and humanities will become increasingly required to demonstrate its 'impact' on society in order to secure funding, and states that while scholarship is seen as insignificant by the government, their priorities are 'work that is useful, in a crudely defined way, for business or policy-making'. To this end, the British Academy published a pamphlet last June highlighting 'a Humanities for Business programme offering modules to companies like Unilever on topics such as Machiavelli and entrepreneurial success, Rousseau and modern marketing, and inspirational leadership in Shakespeare’s Henry V'.
As Pears says,
Research in the humanities has little direct economic or social impact in the crude and reductive fashion that Hefce and civil servants wish to impose, and this has to be admitted. To pretend otherwise is a fraud, and to divert resources into ‘outreach’ programmes with no purpose except to satisfy the regulators and acquire funding is a gross waste of money and a perversion of the purpose of research.
We must make the case for the independence of scholars, and the right of the academic community to decide which research projects are worth pursuing. But we must also be careful, when defending the arts and humanities, not to fall into the trap of reacting to the philistinism of the government by insisting on the other extreme - that of the arts as distinct from society. That would suit the government very well - it would help justify the return of the arts to a very few, select universities, and would result in the impoverishment of intellectual debate.
The extent to which research in the arts is open to working-class students should be the measure of its social relevance and 'impact'. Given the ways in which the government's policies will restrict the access of the working class to further and higher education, the humanities are set to become less socially relevant, not more.
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