Arts & minds

Pressure on students to qualify for careers has seen the BA degree take a battering – but the results may not be as intended.

- PAUL LITTLE

‘I did not realise that when money becomes the core value, then education drives towards utility or that the life of the mind will not be counted as a good unless it produces measurable results.” – Jeanette Winterson, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

STAGE ONE: Introduction to the arts degree – principles and perspectives

“Imagine a world without English majors,” proposed a recent headline in the New York Times. Although such a prospect may seem utopian to some, there are good reasons to be concerned about declining interest in the study of traditional arts subjects in universities here and overseas.

While some subjects taught in arts faculties, such as criminology and sociology, are thriving, others are not. In general, the more a subject appears to offer the promise of employment, the more popular it will be.

Take English, perhaps the archetypal “arts subject” and a good example of the challenges facing parts of the faculty. The number of equivalent full-time students (EFTS) studying English at the University of Auckland has fallen from 548 in 2002, to 377 in pre-pandemic 2018, to 328 in 2020. Accompanying these changes are increasingly punishing workloads and pressure on standards. But the problem is much wider and goes back much further, according to Brian Roper, associate professor and former head of the politics programme at the University of Otago.