Exeter cuts

[Itchylegs]

Anyone panicking about large cuts to Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at Exeter. Seems like the crisis in HE is getting bigger and bigger. It feels like such a crummy time to go to university.

People who have grown up speaking several languages. There are a lot of them in London - and a lot of such people have also arrived as students and young workers.

Which is not most of the young people in this country. Even our EAL students often say they don't speak their heritage language all that well. Not all, but many of them.

Got you. When you said they "learned their languages before they went to university" it sounded as if they learned them at school.

Possibly but the government may consider that there are plenty of plurilingual people for the country's economic needs.

But they don't, given the most recent report bemoaning the country's loss of 48 billion due to lack of language skills. This was 2022.

There are endless reports bemoaning the country's loss of language skills but every single piece of government action undermines language teaching in mainstream education settings.

@tadjennyp It’s not just MFLs that need a boost. We actually need people who don’t think like scientists. They tend to see right and wrong and don’t always see nuances. Historians and others are perhaps thinking in a different way and certainly can develop critical thinking skills which all countries need. There is a need for a variety of skills but we have had a very big push for stem and are not adequately providing for others. Universities are responding to this. We are also seeing insufficient jobs for stem grads now so evaluating careers is very important.

Oh I agree with both of the last two posts. Sometimes I feel like humanities and MFL teachers/University Departments are a bit like Peter and the Dyke just trying to plug the holes but without the heroic outcome.

As a scientist I agree with the need for high quality degree programmes in the Humanities and Liberal Arts, including MFL, and the wider value of the skills thereby cultivated.

When was any national government ever accused of joined up thinking?

@poetryandwine I think we need a variety of skills don’t we? Successful organisations always do. It’s a blend to get the best outcomes for the company and the employees. I do value science but, remembering Covid, we can get caught up in science without considering wider issues that arise from an insufficiently broad approach. We certainly didn’t consider the needs of dc at that time. Voices such as those of Jonathan Sumption were ignored and we haven’t had great outcomes for dc. We just tended to see life or death and science having all the answers which was not possible.

I've got children who are at opposite ends of the spectrum - extremely quantitative on the one hand, extremely verbal and visual on the other, though they all speak languages and are all A* Maths types. Even among siblings who are well disposed to one another there comes a point when they have a very hard time agreeing on the conclusions to draw from the same data so I am quite pessimistic about the ability of society to see the bigger picture that draws on both the left brained systemizing and scaleable mindset and the mind with a coherent overall vision.

I have a lot of respect for your views, @MeetMeOnTheCorner , and I agree we needed a more holistic approach during the pandemic, but we disagree strongly over JS.

I find him highly reductionistic. Personal liberty is his highest value. He gave no consideration to the very real possibility that the voluntary precautions he advocated could have overwhelmed the NHS. He publicised false data supporting his views (undercounting greatly the number of otherwise healthy people who died).

I back up my views with the measles outbreaks in the US and UK now that vaccines have become voluntary. Too many people think others should bear the burden of responsible behaviour.

JS was correct that children and YP were failed. They continue to pay the price.

My DSis is a teacher and thinks the causes are complex. Certainly more holistic planning would have helped.

A fascinating post.

I am rather pessimistic in general but I find research in this area exciting.

These stimulating conversations can result in the best outcomes, if everyone has the stamina to see them through. Science is not for the faint of heart and the involvement of the right brained on scientific teams can sometimes be very valuable.

Have vaccinations been mandatory in UK?

Thank you! I'm fascinated by this area - by research and also by what we might do to get greater appreciation and understanding. I think art can do a lot if it's any good (so not conceptual contemporary art) at offering a coherent structured vision.

No, I see the confusion in what I wrote. Vaccines have always been voluntary here. But we eliminated measles in 2017 and lost Measles Elimination Status in Jan 2026. That is down to low vaccine uptake.

In the US vaccines are regulated by the states. MMR is among the vaccines mandatory for beginning school. However all states all medical exemptions and religious exemptions, though a few disallow the religious exemption for MMR. Claims for religious exemptions have been growing.

The US attained Measles Elimination Status in 2000 and has managed to delay the upcoming review until Nov.

@poetryandwine I’m not 100% in favour of what JS says but - we needed other opinions and didn’t get them. We had a very one sided view of how to manage a pandemic and there was great cost attached to that. It’s more of a plea to listen to a greater variety of opinions. The universities do produce people who can think in ways that complement science but we should not exclusively “follow the science”
because it fails to look at all nuances.