By - - BBC
Updated: Mon, 06 Jun 2011 13:47:43 UTC

Thanks to samwalrus for the link

[Update - by AC Grayling]

Might I comment on two points raised in this thread about the New College of the Humanities (NCH)?

Richard, along with Steve Jones and Lawrence Krauss, will lecture on their areas of expertise in the Science Literacy programme which is compulsory for all students at NCH. Although NCH is a humanities institution, the idea of bridging the CP Snow gap as much as possible - and in particular to bring extended examples of serious, disciplined, evidence-and-reason-based scientific styles of thinking into the humanities curriculum - seems to me tremendously important. It is great that Richard and our other science colleagues are involved with NCH in this way, and I hope we reinvigorate the attempts sporadically made in the past at other institutions to demand of humanities students that they get a good acquaintance with scientific ideas.

The fact that NCH is adopting part of the US model on how to fund higher education is a sticking point for some. Here are the relevant points: if you look at what UK universities charge overseas students, and at fees at US Ivy League universities, you get an idea of the true cost of a high quality higher education.

We have had heavy subsidies for UK HE for a long time - a good thing: we would surely all like all education from 3 to 23 to be fully invested in by the whole of society: but our society has made dramatically different choices now - and the 100% abolition of subsidy for humanities and social sciences degrees means that universities will now have to struggle to keep provision going, having only the capped fees that the government is allowing them to charge. The result is already evident: closure or shrinkage of departments, staff sackings, a smaller humanities provision. This has already happened from the last round of much smaller cuts: things are now getting far worse. Apart from the intrinsic value of humanities subjects (forget the PoMo attrition they have suffered: imagine a society that knows nothing of history , cares nothing about literature, and never asks great questions about life, society and value) the fact is that we have a service economy in the UK, and the humanities mainly staff the law, civil service, business, journalism, creative industries, politics, education, and much besides. - So at NCH we are biting the bullet on how much it really costs to provide an excellent HE in these subjects, but we want to support as many students as possible financially. The aim is to have over 30% of students on support (in the first small intake of students it will be 20%+ but building), either being educated free or only having to pay the lowest average of the fees charged at state universities. To this end we have set up a charitable trust, already taking endowments, into which a proportion of our revenue will go annually on a permanent basis, to provide scholarships and bursaries; and we are establishing relationships with state schools to seek out their brightest pupils to give as many of them as we can a free degree education if they choose the humanities. This is how Harvard & Yale cooperate, and given the new HE landscape in the UK, it is increasingly how our own universities are going to have to operate if we are going keep HE accessible to the best school-leavers no matter what their capacity to pay.
AC Grayling

A new British college aiming to rival Oxford and Cambridge has been launched by leading academics.

New College of the Humanities will give a high-quality education to "gifted" undergraduates and a degree from the University of London, creators say.

The privately-owned London-based college will open in September 2012 and is planning to charge fees of £18,000.

The 14 professors involved include biologist Richard Dawkins and historian Sir David Cannadine.

Professor Dawkins is an emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford, as well as being the author of The God Delusion, and Sir David is a professor at Princeton University in the United States.

Based in Bloomsbury, central London, the new college will offer eight undergraduate humanities degrees taught by some of the world's most prominent intellectuals, officials said.

Degrees cover five subject areas - law, economics, history, English literature and philosophy.

Students will also take three "intellectual skills" modules in science literacy, logic and critical thinking and applied ethics - which will result in them being awarded a Diploma of New College in addition to a University of London degree, making a combined award of BA Hons (London) DNC.
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TAGGED: EDUCATION, RICHARD DAWKINS