Arts and humanities courses are under threat at Scottish universities, an expert has warned. Professor Murray Pittock, Bradley Chair in English Literature at the University of Glasgow, believes that the arts play a fundamental role in society and in the broader economy.
[..] He argues the value of humanities has not always been communicated clearly enough by the departments themselves, who may have relied too heavily on historical assumptions about their place within universities.
[..] He said: "There’s often an assumption that they’re worth funding in their own right, or that a university can’t be a university if it doesn’t, for example, have a philosophy department.
"But, of course, many universities have said 'we’re closing our philosophy department.'
"That’s happened a great deal. It’s also happening in classics. It’s increasingly happening in modern languages. Now it’s beginning to happen in core areas like history and English."