Book Sanctuary

Firstly, apologies for the longer than usual delay since the last blog post. It has been a busy period, but that’s no excuse for not exercising myself on the ‘literary treadmill’. Much like the extra ‘half’ tyre that I’m currently carrying on my mid-riff, I must get back into the habit of exercise and keeping my creative mind fresh.

One thing that has kept me busy is the gradually increasing workload at University. For those that haven’t seen in the earlier blog posts, I’m currently studying a postgraduate MSc called ‘Material Cultures and the History of the Book’. This course is part literary studies, part historical studies. We look at first editions, rare manuscripts and similar delights and determine what we can about the production, distribution and reception of that book. It’s a delight to study, and in my view an important activity as we must know where the book has come from in order to understand where it should go, in both print and eBook form.

Arguably, however, this course and those like it that focus on the arts and cultural studies do not lend their weight in purely economic terms nationwide. This isn’t my argument, but seems to be part of the thinking in the recent higher education review completed by Lord Browne et al. This review has been all over the news and in unfortunate circumstances. Firstly, there was the argument in government, upon publication of the review, about student fees. The debate amongst politicians, and enthusiastically taken up by the mainstream media, has focussed on fees and how much a student should pay.

Secondly, as a reaction to the fees debate, there were the student protests in London recently. It was deeply disappointing to see a legitimately organised protest descend into violence and thuggery. It was damaging for the image of NUS (National Union of Students), but this is unfortunate as it was a violent minority, quite a few of which I will wager are not even students, but anarchists. I will always argue that peaceful protest and debate are the only ways to go, as thuggery deprives a protest any sense of legitimacy. It is difficult for NUS to avoid this happening again, but their public condemnation of the violence deserves credit.

However, drilling down into the report it is clear that some significant points have escaped the attention of rolling news channels and the newspapers. These details don’t make thrilling headlines, but will arguably have a greater impact on the structure of Universities and the survival of degrees that focus on the Arts, Culture and related disciplines. I will be posting another blog about these finer points and their damaging implications in the next few days, but my source document is the excellent article ‘Browne’s Gamble’ by Stefan Collini. This can be found in the London Review of Books dated 4 November (volume 32, number 21). This will be my main reference in my next post and I will be focussing on specific arguments, but I encourage all to read the article.

The next post will talk in detail about the proposals that could change University courses for good, but until then…

All the best,

Thomas