“I ask absolutely nothing more from you than to do what you have actually been doing. Go out into the fray and keep reading,” was Percival Everett’s guidance when he addressed finishing trainees at Wesleyan university in Connecticut last summertime. Fitting words from a prize-winning author, at a time when gaming has actually become a more typical pastime in the US than reading a book. In the UK, too, concerns are growing about the decline of reading, partly due to ubiquitous screen-based entertainment. Last week, parliament’s education committee required the National Year of Checking out to be encompassed a decade, to instill the routine in children and young people.All scholastic disciplines use books to communicate details, however for literature and the humanities more commonly, they are an essential currency. As the 2026 graduation season draws to a close, and robes and mortarboards are put away for another year, there is growing anger that these topics are under attack from university administrations looking for methods to conserve cash– while ministers look away.Analysis of 2024 data for the Guardian uncovered nearly 4,000 task cuts in Forming(the acronym for social sciences, liberal arts and arts). All but 110 were in non-Russell Group universities, which have lower entry requirements and recruit more socioeconomically disadvantaged students, causing issues that some courses may become the protect of an elite. However liberal arts cuts are not limited to one kind of organization. Exeter plans to cut 150 full-time posts. Nottingham anticipates to end up being the very first Russell Group university to withdraw all its contemporary foreign language degrees.Prof Susan J Smith, president of the British Academy, recently explained the situation as “an emergency, threatening all subjects
“, and singled out the issue of “cold spots” where some disciplines are at danger of disappearing. It is not clear that the review of college which the academy desires would supply a service. But she is best to highlight the negative impacts of fragmented decision-making. To accounting professionals, some courses or departments might be deemed expense centres. But to lecturers and students, and the places in which they are based, they are cultural resources– repositories of knowledge developed over decades, a few of which will have a specific, local character and relevance.No one argues that no course should ever close. But the options that students make are partly driven by changes further down the education system. The increasing appeal of Stem(science, innovation
, engineering and mathematics) is partially due to the Conservative policy of promoting them; the fall in teens selecting literature is linked to an unimaginative GCSE(surely something that a brand-new prime minister with an English degree could fix). Universities make their own choices about what and who to teach. However ministers should be upfront about the restrictions in which they run. An expected ₤ 100m cut to mentor grants, integrated with the introduction of an international
trainee levy, suggest that a years-long monetary squeeze is set to carry on. In such a climate, standing up for the worth of literature and the liberal arts ought not to be delegated well-known novelists.