Leading academics have called for the UK¡¯s Arts and Humanities Research Council to be scrapped or scaled back, with funding being reallocated to the creation of tenure-track teaching jobs in new liberal arts-style colleges.

John Marenbon, senior research fellow and honorary professor of medieval philosophy at the University of Cambridge, claimed that group projects funded by the AHRC had ¡°been shown to be damaging to research rather than beneficial to it¡±.

He was speaking ahead of the publication of his report, Intangible Assets: Funding Research in the Arts and Humanities,?forthcoming from?the thinktank Politeia, which proposes what claims to be a ¡°more sustainable¡± model for supporting the disciplines.

The pamphlet proposes that the AHRC in its current form ¡°should be closed down and the money now directed to it turned into a fund to encourage universities to give full, tenure-track teaching jobs (allowing normal research) to arts and humanities academics within three years of their PhD¡±.

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Speaking at a debate ahead of the report¡¯s launch, Lord Rees, the astronomer royal who is a former master of Trinity College, Cambridge, and an ex-president of the Royal Society, responded to Professor Marenbon¡¯s vision by suggesting that funding for group research could instead be put towards turning?10 of the UK¡¯s top performing universities into US-style liberal arts colleges.

While he did not agree that the AHRC should be scrapped entirely, Lord Rees said he was ¡°concerned about the focus on precisely prescribed projects¡± awarded public funding over basic research.

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¡°The UK¡¯s universities obviously vary in quality,¡± he added, ¡°but there¡¯s a systemic weakness: their missions are not sufficiently varied.¡±

Lord Rees added: ¡°It would be realistic to fund?10 possibly smaller universities [other than Oxford and Cambridge] so they can emulate US liberal art colleges in offering high quality, intensive teaching and thereby counterbalance the excessive allure of Oxbridge, at least for arts and humanities, as this, I think, is unhealthy and dominates the new agenda far too much.¡±

Professor Marenbon later agreed that the freedom awarded to academics working at liberal arts colleges ¡°is something which fits very well with what I¡¯ve been thinking about¡±.

He told?Times Higher Education: ¡°My contention is that in the visual arts and humanities the best research is done by individual researchers over a period of time without having to give the details of the whole project [to funders] in advance.

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¡°The point is, in creating these liberal arts colleges, the academics there wouldn¡¯t just be teaching drones, they would be people who had plenty of time to do their own research.¡±

Professor Marenbon¡¯s report also calls for the arts and humanities to be excluded from the research excellence framework.

¡°Since arts and humanities subjects do not in reality receive the [quality-related] funds they win, there is no reason to require that they are assessed for them,¡± he states. ¡°The exclusion of [these subjects] from the REF should prompt a rethinking and simplification of the whole system.¡±

rachael.pells@timeshighereducation.com