Philosophy at Dundee is saved — in part, and for now

A pattern had settled over the academic news of recent years. A university announces savings, the philosophy department appears on the list, a campaign begins, the department closes.

This summer, at Dundee, the pattern broke.

Under a cost-cutting programme, the management of the University of Dundee had planned to stop offering philosophy as a degree subject. The news at the end of August shows the decision reversed: the programme will continue — in reduced form.

The sentence used by members of the department in passing on the announcement captures what happened: “A small programme with a wide international reach has reversed the trend of closures in the humanities.”

Two reservations in the headline matter: in part, and for now.

Why this case matters#

We have written before about the closure of philosophy departments in Britain. Dundee and Hertfordshire came up at the same time.

Decisions of this kind look as though they arise from the budgetary troubles of individual universities. Taken together, though, they form a trend, and the logic of that trend is simple: a department is measured by its graduates' starting salaries.

By that criterion philosophy always loses. The returns on a philosophical education are neither quick nor tied to a single profession.

What makes the Dundee case instructive is that the campaign, rather than accepting the criterion, shifted the ground.

What does the public think?#

Another piece of evidence fed into the argument at the end of August.

A survey asking how important it is for a typical university to have departments in various fields measured where philosophy stands in public estimation. The discussion of it on Daily Nous drew more than forty comments.

Whatever the details of the findings, the discussion itself brought one thing into the open: university managers reach often for the argument that the public does not want this, and the empirical basis for that argument is a good deal shakier than it is assumed to be.

Closure decisions come, more often than not, not from public demand but from internal accounting. The difference matters, because the second is a decision open to argument.

The “international reach” argument#

One of the arguments used in the Dundee campaign is especially worth noting: the programme may be small, but its reach is not national.

This is unlike the customary language of departmental defence. The usual line is that philosophy teaches critical thinking, or that employers are looking for philosophy graduates. Both may be true; both also imprison the defence in the attacker's vocabulary.

The argument that came to the fore at Dundee was different. What makes a university a university is being part of a worldwide research network. To close a department is to leave that network — and the cost of getting back into it is higher than the saving made by closing.

This is an argument couched in the language of accounts. That it worked is no accident.

What a reduced programme means#

The phrase “saved in part” deserves to be taken seriously.

A philosophy programme needs a minimum staff if it is to survive: at least one specialist each in the history of philosophy, logic, ethics, epistemology and metaphysics. Below that threshold the programme exists on paper while the curriculum narrows, options dwindle and graduate work becomes impossible.

Shrinking a department is, more often than not, a deferred closure.

That is why the outcome at Dundee, while presented as a victory, is being described with care: for now.

A note on Turkey#

Philosophy departments in Turkey face a different equation. The pressing issues are not closures but enrolment and employment.

The question the Dundee argument raises, however, holds here too: by what criterion does a university defend a department?

Our map of Turkey's philosophy journals and our file on the digital archive, both published this month, showed another face of the same problem: a department exists by putting the knowledge it produces into circulation.

A department that is not seen is a department that cannot be defended.