Kingston Upon Thames (Parliament Politics Magazine) – Kingston University’s cut Humanities department axe on job uncertainty. Closure planned for September 2025, amid concerns for the borough’s educational future.
The university has attributed its decision to a broader trend in the higher education industry.
The move, which is pending a 30-day comment period, will result in the discontinuation of Kingston Borough’s Humanities, English, and Philosophy courses.
The Humanities Department’s current creative writing course will continue to be offered.
Together with the suspension of applications for the foundation year Humanities program, the Kingston Language Scheme, which provides free language instruction to students, will also be closing.
Mandy Ure, dean of the Kingston School of Art (KSA), where Humanities is housed, attributed the decision to low enrollment in Humanities classes in emails sent to students and staff on February 26.
The suggestions are a part of an evaluation of the university’s program. Over the next two years, the university intends to make £20 million in cuts, concentrating on departments and disciplines that receive few applications from students.
Students and staff are worried about Kingston’s artistic future as a result of the decision.
On February 26, just after a staff meeting, students received an email outlining the plans.
Theo Vaughan, a 20-year-old Creative Writing undergraduate student, said: “I felt very confused, frustrated, but mostly angry.
An hour after discussing ways to improve the Humanities department, we were told it would no longer exist.”
Vaughan expressed concerns about the future of Creative Writing, which the new plans call for being transferred to the Department of Critical and Historical Studies.
If the ideas are approved, job losses are anticipated. This has sparked concerns about future teaching levels at the university. Nowadays, there are a lot of academics working in humanities courses like English and creative writing.
“KU has earned a reputation as one of the best Creative Writing courses in the UK, but it’s deeply tied to the English department,”
Vaughan said.
“If our professors are at risk, the course under a new department will be unrecognisable.”
26-year-old Tiger Liu, a PhD candidate in Modern European Philosophy, voiced his concerns about carrying out his studies while facing employment instability.
“Our learning is intrinsically linked to our professors, who are leading experts in the field. If they are made redundant, we will be left without supervisors or academic events essential to our research,”
Liu said.
“The university’s promises to continue teaching and research feel like empty words.”
Ure said that the institution would open a 30-day consultation session for all students to provide any input in an email that was distributed to all of them.
The communication also outlined the necessity of increasing funding for departments with growing student populations and promising future growth.
24-year-old Jessica Oakes-Smith, an MA candidate in Creative Writing and Publishing, contended that the university has been putting money before culture and education.
“Kingston markets itself as a hub for the arts and diversity,” she said.
“Recent actions show that they have not lived up to their promises and have failed at a university’s job as a centre for the arts, expression, and culture in favour of being a business first.”
Teaching staff argued the plans were a betrayal of the intellectual heritage of the university.
Daniel Read, an hourly-paid English Literature lecturer and University and College Union rep said: “Kingston holds the world-renowned Dame Iris Murdoch archive, yet it is now dismantling the very departments responsible for teaching us about her work. It seems blind to the values that the arts, humanities, and social sciences represent.”
He added: “These proposals damage my career progression, my discipline, and the university sector as a whole.”
Oakes-Smith said she had concerns about the professors.
“Our lecturers have their jobs at stake. Many students have chosen supervisors specifically, and if they leave, it compromises the quality of our degrees. We could be the last students to study humanities at Kingston.”
She also mentioned how the department has improved Kingston’s standing in the creative writing course rankings through programs like The Big Read.
Ure, the head of KSA, mentioned “a very difficult national economic environment for the higher education sector” in her email.
As universities deal with dwindling numbers of international applicants and a challenging domestic financial environment, the Kingston cuts are part of a larger trend in the sector that saw courses eliminated, departments closed, and redundancies.
The decision is part of a larger trend at UK universities, according to Read Talk. He asserted that the funding of education is the root of the issue.
He added: “Applying business finance and marketing approaches to education will not solve these problems.
Universities are a public good. They should enable people to access new ways of understanding the world, not just function as businesses.”
Oakes-Smith cautioned that this shutdown might mark the beginning of a perilous change.
She said: “This speaks to a wider problem, the stripping away of free speech and creative expression.
Without humanities, we lose the ability to understand history and avoid repeating past mistakes.”
By sending open letters to university administration, students have been attempting to overturn the ruling; some have even sought independent legal counsel.
A Kingston University spokesperson said: “To be in the best position possible to invest in and support areas of growth and continue to enhance our students’ teaching and learning, the University has been reviewing its undergraduate and postgraduate provision.”
On the decision to target specific departments, the spokesperson said: “The subject areas proposed for closure are low recruiting and have had to be subsidised by others across Kingston School of Art for a number of years.
This has deprived areas where there is demand and those with potential for further growth of important resources.”
The spokesman emphasized that they are “currently consulting our University community about the proposals” and that “no final decisions have yet been taken.”
Additionally, they gave pupils the assurance that they “can and will receive the same high-quality teaching they expect from us.”
Recalling Iris Murdoch’s words in her 1993 address to Kingston University graduates, Read said: “She spoke directly to graduates about the importance of not forgetting the arts, by which you have been so enlightened.
Good art, very difficult – music, poetry, painting, literature in all its forms – these must be practised and protected.”
What are the reasons for closure of the Humanities program?
One of the main reasons for the closure, according to the university, was a drop in student interest in humanities courses over a number of years.
The administration pointed out that there haven’t been enough applications for these programs to warrant their continuation.
As part of a larger plan to reallocate resources to regions in Kingston borough with greater student interest and growth potential, Kingston University is looking to save £20 million overall by closing courses that are losing money.
The decision was also cited as being influenced by rising operational costs, a decline in applications from outside as a result of government immigration policy, and a more competitive higher education market.