A letter in support of English Language and Linguistics at the University of Kent

23rd February 2024

Dear Vice-Chancellor, DVC for Strategy and Performance, and Chair of Council,

We write on behalf of the English Association, the Institute for English Studies, and University English, the three major subject bodies in the UK representing the study of English language, literature and linguistics, to express our dismay at the news of the proposed redundancies being imposed on English language and linguistics colleagues at the University of Kent. Whilst we recognise that such decisions are not easy, the risk this poses to your reputation as a university with a strong track record of providing transformative education to students from diverse backgrounds in your region will be significant. We understand you will be receiving many letters of this kind so, in order to forestall a pre-prepared reply, we want to emphasise from the start that we are offering practical support, including, for example, to help build a hub with a Multi-Academy Trust to help with this subject’s future UK recruitment. As we propose later in this letter, we would be pleased to meet with the Senior Management team to explain what we can offer, and how we can work with colleagues at Kent.

We are aware of the serious financial challenges faced by all HEIs in the UK at the moment. We know it is very hard to plan for the long-term when short-term savings are needed, and that, in the current climate, the arts and humanities have become a soft target. This is exacerbated by a reliance in universities at the sharper end of the current turmoil in the sector on data-harvesting companies who seem to offer simple solutions when we all need to think much harder about future-proofing our universities and students’ futures by providing multidisciplinary alternatives to the challenges of our time, and articulating more robustly what arts and humanities programmes actually offer. For example, of the ten ‘top skills for 2025’ listed in the World Economic Forum’s ‘Future of Jobs Report’, eight derive from arts and humanities disciplines. The AI market is a case in point: in a language-based sector, arts graduates are in demand for the new jobs – like prompt engineers – that the area will need. We need more not fewer joint degrees in our universities, not only English language and literature, a successful programme already in many departments, but linguistics and criminology or linguistics and computing science. English language and linguistics is positioned at the interface of humanities and social sciences, so it can create a bridge between these disciplines, and across to STEM faculties. Indeed, the critical value of linguistic knowledge for the future of AI with respect to natural language processing, and for working with large language models is widely acknowledged; it will be very difficult to recreate this knowledge base in your university if you lose it now. We would also add that a subject like English language and linguistics is especially successful at recruiting international students.

As subject bodies we are working together to combat some of the challenges universities face. So concerned are we by our universities’ reliance on predictions based on problematic historical data that we are working with the SUMS Consultancy to get a more nuanced and accurate dataset for English Studies. We will share this information on the English Association and University English websites, and update it annually, providing it for
free to all colleagues in departments as well as university planners. UCAS data shows us that applications to undergraduate degree programmes in English Studies have grown in 2022 and 2023, contradicting predictions by some of further decline. A-level enrolments are also rising.

Because we are equally concerned by the failure in our universities to think seriously about a multidisciplinary future in which SHAPE and STEM subjects collaborate, this Spring 2024 we are launching Thinking Forwards, in collaboration with CRASSH (University of Cambridge) and the School of Advanced Study (University of London) to encourage better and more ambitious interdisciplinary thinking and collaboration across subjects.
We would like to work with you in supporting English language and linguistics at Kent so this subject can achieve its full potential. To that end, we urge you to rethink your decision and current strategy and to work with arts and humanities colleagues to investigate ways in which, rather than shrinking provision, their teaching could be used to equip more undergraduates with the vital skills that they will need in the future. As a recent British Academy report put it, ‘arts and humanities students are the “ideal entrepreneurs” of the future, digitally literate, ready to thrive in a globally diverse world, resilient, confident at analysis and team working, independently minded’ (British Academy’s Right Skills). We would be happy to meet with you to discuss how we can help language and linguistics thrive at Kent.

Yours sincerely,

Professor Clare Lees (Director of The Institute for English Studies; Vice Dean, School of Advanced Study, London)
Professor Gail Marshall (Chair of University English; Head of the School of Humanities, University of Reading)
Professor Jennifer Richards (Chair of the Higher Education Committee of the English Association; English (2001) Professor, University of Cambridge)