‘I thought we were safe’: shock at Exeter’s humanities ‘gamble’

Planned cuts to the University of Exeter’s prized humanities department show no job is safe in the UK’s current wave of redundancies, according to affected academics, who add that decisions are being made based on undergraduate students’ choices rather than research strength.

Around 150 full time equivalent jobs are set to go at the south-west England institution, with 115 of them in the Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, despite it being internationally renowned. The University and College Union (UCU) puts the number of at-risk staff at more than 500 with 200 roles being axed, when part-time positions are taken into account.

Exeter ranks within the top 100 global universities for humanities provision in Times Higher Education’s World University Rankings. It was in the top 10 for subjects including history, Classics and theology and religious studies in the last Research Excellence Framework.

Muireann Maguire, a professor in Russian comparative literature and co-director of the Exeter Centre for Eastern European and Eurasian Studies, said she felt “existential terror” upon hearing the news, adding that the atmosphere has been “horrible” since the announcement last week.

Maguire said she has been overwhelmed by the support for Exeter’s humanities departments. “Something that I’ve noticed…is the number of people saying to me personally, or just commenting on social media, ‘I can’t believe this is happening at Exeter’, or ‘I thought Exeter at least was safe’.” A petition against the cuts has already gained more than 10,000 signatures.

She said there feels like there is a “split” between academics and management, and that academics feel “cheated” as “we’re very successful in terms of what we were hired to do: delivering research outcomes, writing books…but the managers aren’t concerned with those metrics”.

Instead, “they’re concerned with student recruitment and reaching particular targets, so it’s like we’re speaking two different languages,” said Maguire, who herself is at risk of redundancy.

David Miller, a former head of marketing at Exeter who now works as a consultant, highlighted how undergraduate numbers studying history at Exeter have dropped by a quarter and languages enrolments are down by 37 per cent.

“If anything, Exeter has made the call to reduce staff numbers in these subjects later than other universities. All they are doing is aligning resources with demand”, he said on LinkedIn.

But Maguire said she believed that the government could be doing more to protect humanities subjects, and that government’s own strategic priorities could be fuelling the cuts.  

“The signals the government is giving are all directed towards STEM subjects, and I think that’s short sighted. STEM has its role, AI has its role, both are important, but they can work with the humanities.”

A spokesperson for Exeter reiterated that “these are proposals at this stage”, and “all colleagues affected by the proposed changes will receive all the information they need throughout the process, along with every opportunity to ask questions, raise concerns, and participate fully”.

John Heathershaw, a professor of international relations, who is also at risk, described how academics have been sent “individual files” summarising their work while at Exeter, and are being required to fill out forms explaining what they’ve achieved.

They will then be given a score between zero and three by the university – a process that will help decide which academics are made redundant if not enough take voluntary redundancy.

Heathershaw said some of the data collected about staff was inaccurate, and staff are “confused” as to “how the university could possibly mark this”. 

Some have alleged that the announcement was timed to ensure they had few options to take industrial action now that teaching and exams are over, with the university looking to confirm redundancies by the start of the next academic year.

Co-chair of the Exeter UCU branch, Michael Flexer, said the union will still hold an indicative vote on whether to pursue industrial action tomorrow, describing its base as “super motivated”.

He said telling staff if they have a job or not at the start of the academic year would cause “chaos”.

“It’s grim. People will be getting their notice in the first week of teaching…The idea that people will be able to hold it together and deliver a term of teaching before they vanish off into the horizon, is bizarre, spiteful and naive as well.”

One humanities lecturer who is at risk, but did not want to be named, feared that the cuts are likely to impact Exeter’s Research Excellence Framework performance. While they said the current REF cycle is “far enough along” that it should be unaffected, they had concerns over how the cuts will impact future cycles.

“I think they’ve effectively thrown the following REF on the fire. They’re not concerned about how the humanities go, and they’re just gambling on the sciences improving at such a rate that the humanities and social sciences don’t matter any more. That’s an extraordinary gamble.”

The university spokesperson added that they “understand that this is a worrying time for those who are affected”.

“We are not proposing to close any departments or disciplines, and under these proposals Exeter would continue to have one of the largest faculties of humanities, arts and social sciences in the UK.”

juliette.rowsell@timeshighereducation.com