Our future may depend on the humanities

It’s natural that universities would contract. It is simply a market correction

At least, that’s what a colleague recently said to me, referencing the earlier period of—some would say unfounded—growth in the UK’s higher education sector.

But what we’re seeing now is not a neutral rebalancing of the books. It feels like a dismantling of the humanities, a retreat from the very fields of knowledge that hold the keys to our collective future.

When and where

The decisions being made about where and how to cut seem to reflect a logic of short-term profitability rather than long-term sustainability. Humanities programmes—often less lucrative than their STEM counterparts—have suffered disproportionately. Of the 400 job losses initially on the cards at Cardiff University, for example, as many as 120 were expected to be in the Arts and Humanities. Massive cuts in English, anthropology, theatre and music at Goldsmiths or philosophy, art history and music at University of Kent are only the tip of the iceberg.

And yet, this is happening at the very moment we most need the humanities. As we face accelerating climate change, biodiversity loss, and a wider crisis of sustainability, it may seem natural to double down on disciplines like climatology and engineering. Few would question their centrality to the so-called green transition. But while these fields equip us with essential tools to understand and respond to environmental degradation, they deal with symptoms rather than root causes.

Humanities in the environment

Across the UK, humanities scholars are already playing a critical—if underappreciated—role in responding to environmental breakdown. At Bath Spa University, Samantha Walton’s “Changing Practice” project highlighted how a place-based lens, informed by arts and humanities, can help people connect with and care for their local environments, potentially overcoming feelings of detachment when facing large-scale crises like climate change. Through public engagement events, the project connected creative practitioners and academics with communities experiencing disruption and change, nurturing new collaborative networks and contributing to policy discussions about the meaning, ecology, and distinctive cultural characteristics of place. ​

Researchers at the University of Leeds turned to British Romantic literature to explore how people have historically made sense of extreme weather, applying these insights to contemporary climate engagement. Their research informed collaborations with the Poetry Society and the Wordsworth Trust, including creative writing workshops and a youth poetry competition. These initiatives led to new learning programmes, shifts in classroom practice, and enhanced community well-being through creative expression. In drawing on the emotional and imaginative power of Romantic writing, the project showed how literature can deepen public understanding of climate crisis—not by simplifying it, but by inviting reflection, empathy, and a more expansive sense of connection.

These are not abstract contributions. They are shaping policy, influencing institutions, and broadening how we respond to crisis. Yet the structures that enable this work are being steadily dismantled.

The roots of the crisis

Our current crises stem from narrow, technocratic thinking: a mindset that externalised environmental harm, reduced nature to property, and prioritised short-term gain over long-term survival. The humanities help us challenge that logic. Cutting them is doubling down on what brought us here.

If universities are worried about low enrolments or declining interest in humanities programmes, the solution isn’t to axe them—it’s to reimagine them. It’s to find new ways of making the humanities matter to young people, and to society at large. That means reframing these disciplines not as relics of a pre-digital age, but as vital forms of inquiry and expression that help us live more fully, think more deeply, and engage more responsibly with the world.

The role of a university cannot be reduced to supplying the labour force demanded by the current market. It must be a place that helps shape what we value in the first place. That means exposing students to ways of thinking they might not have encountered before. It means helping them see the world—and themselves—differently. And it means igniting the desire to study not only what is profitable, but what is meaningful.

Pure imagination

Ultimately, the antidote to our overlapping crises is not just better data or smarter technologies—it is expansive imagination. And that imagination is cultivated not in labs or spreadsheets, but through the critical, creative, and interpretive work of the humanities. Literature, philosophy, history, and the arts help us make sense of ourselves and others. They teach us to interrogate the present, reckon with the past, and imagine futures that aren’t simply extensions of the status quo.

The humanities don’t just illuminate the blind spots of our civilisation—they challenge its assumptions, complicate its narratives, and expand the range of what we can think and feel. In a time of profound uncertainty, they offer not solutions, but orientation: a deeper sense of what is at stake, and why it matters.

To treat them as dispensable is to confuse utility with value. The humanities are not a luxury—they are where a society’s ethical and imaginative life takes shape. They won’t give us all the answers, but they keep us asking the right questions—and without that, no future worth having can be built.