re: #20 Wendell Zurkowitz ((slave to the waffle light))

Replacing professors with “Your new literary friend who’s fun to be with”

It’s not even that.

What the University of Leicester management, using that management-speak developed in the late 20th century, are saying this:

We need to stamp out graduates with degrees that will land them jobs. If we don’t do that, then the politicians will stop sending us money.

Here in the US, the past couple of decades or so have seen colleges (and some universities) close down programs. Either completely, or merge small departments into large ones.

Philosophy was an easy axe. Physics less so, but that’s been happening also. Classics is another easy axe (who needs Latin and Greek?) And so on.

Meanwhile, new majors sprung up: website design, gaming programming and development, etc.

The only reason English departments exist in most colleges and universities is because the colleges typically require a basic English composition class for a degree. Without that requirement English departments would be much, much smaller and rolled into the foreign language department.