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Authoritarian regimes from the US to China and India perceive many humanities and social sciences as both useless and dangerous. But while their truths might be inconvenient, they are vital to preventing technological developments from tearing already frayed social fabrics, says Saikat Majumdar 

Australian study finds that philosophers outearn motor mechanics – on average

Professor of public humanities position for Birmingham City University’s Islam Issa comes amid pressure on humanities courses and threat of AI

Enrolments drop by a fifth in a year after business school opts to close programmes in response to government squeeze on undergraduate intake

Restrictions on what models will discuss are necessary, but ill-informed blocks distort inquiry, say Lorna Waddington and Richard de Blacquiere-Clarkson

Weeding allows collections to evolve with academia – but redistributing books to other libraries could help equalise knowledge access, says Natalie Pang

A library is not a fast-fashion store. You don’t discard last season’s items because nobody wanted them, says Andrew Hui

Savings only part of the motivation for university’s ‘realignment’ to ‘remain relevant’, but union says management wants the humanities ‘burned’

By spreading studentships around the country, the AHRC’s new PhD funding formula will strengthen research through diversity, says Katie Normington

Hike in fees of up to 6 per cent unlikely to compensate for erosion of research funding and cuts to grant schemes and mobility scholarships

From next year, the AHRC will fund vastly fewer student-initiated PhDs, focusing more of its reduced funding on specific challenges. Critics say this will undo a decade of improvements in PhD supervision and limit vital opportunities to exercise intellectual autonomy. Jack Grove reports

Critical thinking becoming ever more important in age of AI, but departments not good at showing their worth, summit hears

The amalgamation of disparate disciplines into larger administrative units is prompting fears about academic identity, voice and workload â€“ not to mention student experience. Juliette Rowsell reports

More research council funding in the humanities and social sciences should be distributed in the form of micro-grants, says Peter Sutoris

Exeter’s self-funded translation of Ukrainian war poetry ensures it reaches a global audience and contributes to historical justice, says Svitlana Arbuzova

Scholars who teach the rest of us to read Locke and Mill ‘against the grain’ decline to do the same in the case of their own heroes, says Eric Heinze

In a postcolonial and technologically advanced age, ignoring most of the world’s languages is no longer tenable, says Tomasz Kamusella

Winner of 2025 Holberg Prize rejects vocational focus of education and ‘trivialisation’ of humanities

If our subjects are to stay alive and relevant, we must engage more strongly with the factors that give them a place in society, says Marion Thain

Advanced linguistic and cultural skills remain essential for deep insight into how people see themselves in the world, say five modern languages academics

Staff and students fight to save famed unit, transferred from Middlesex University in 2010

Departments should refocus on brokering linguistic services to meet the needs of staff and students in a polyglot world, says Tomasz Kamusella

Most courses are already performance- or employment-focused. The demise of another scholarly programme will skew the balance further, says Ian Pace 

Humanities courses are often forced to ‘justify their relevance’ in ways STEM subjects are not, TV historian says

The global examination of culture is not possible without languages at degree level, say Wendy Ayres-Bennett, Charles Burdett and Emma Cayley

Social sciences ‘the proverbial canary in the coalmine’ for restrictions in other areas of research, dean warns

Members of elite grouping saw numbers enrolled on courses increase by more than 300 while others experienced declines

Petition opposes merging of Japanese, Chinese and Korean into combined programme amid fears of ‘significant’ staff cuts

Scientists from the favoured areas raise the strongest objections

We can no longer deem as educated a student who knows nothing about statistics, data analytics or computing, says Daniel Diermeier

Shrinking humanities departments reducing options for those who wish to study close to home, finds British Academy

Area studies and languages at risk at Leiden University, with academics foreseeing humanities ‘apocalypse’

Survey by the Royal Historical Society finds axe is falling most heavily on post-92 institutions

Institutions in six continents plan fightback against creeping denigration of the social sciences

BBC presenter and physicist says ‘no one is clever enough’ to know which subjects to switch off

A £14.5 million revamp of the unusual Bloomsbury library has also prompted a rethink about its mission, says director Bill Sherman

Unique course denied reprieve as staff say loss of 62 colleagues means averting further cuts is â€˜no victory’

More sixth-formers choosing to study only STEM or social science subjects, squeezing university arts and humanities departments even harder

Changing student expectations and labour market challenges also drive shift towards interdisciplinary programmes

A ‘jobbified’ university teaching ‘transferable skills’ and marketable degrees neglects so much that is crucial to vocational formation, says Chris Higgins

Rigorously and open-mindedly exploring ‘what if’ questions is more necessary than ever in a troubled world, say Brian Ball and Patrycja Kaszynska

It is surely not Gradgrindian to ask whether a subject can do without a corpus of factual knowledge and still expect students to study it, says Colin Swatridge

British Academy report also expresses concern about fall in number of academic staff working in media studies

Course cuts will ‘revitalise’ language offerings, make students more employable and ‘address global challenges’, university claims

European Commission’s plans for international qualification should not only prioritise in-demand technologies, says guild

Anglophone scepticism about the value of language study had been rising for many years before anyone had heard of Duolingo or ChatGPT. But while some academics believe technology will kill off universities’ remaining language departments, others dare to hope it will be their saviour. Patrick Jack reports

The humanities- and social sciences-focused institution is the canary in UK higher education’s increasingly explosive coalmine, says Sir Keith Burnett

University says it intends to phase out teaching in areas also including art history and journalism, as UWE becomes latest institution to announce job cuts

Cameroonian historian and philosopher Achille Mbembe says continent’s universities need more funding, and better global partnerships

Our department obliges Jewish studies students to study Islamic civilisation and vice versa. But will extremism put off applicants, asks Jonathan Judaken

University lifts possibility of compulsory redundancies ahead of planned six-day walkout

Attacks by the likes of Donald Trump and Narendra Modi on how the humanities are taught speak to the enduring political power of these subjects despite their precarity within the academy, says Saikat Majumdar

Development of ‘cold spots’ without arts and humanities programmes prompts calls for more strategic approach to university provision

Students sue Chichester over axeing of unique course, alleging discrimination and breach of contract

Scarce funding means only the library-driven Subscribe to Open scheme is viable outside the sciences, says Christina Lembrecht

Union branch votes to take industrial action after university proposes closing single honours degrees, affecting 30 jobs

University considering â€˜phasing out’ provision in subjects where ‘we no longer feel we can be competitive’

Oxford Brookes’ confirmation of its decision this week is another blow to the UK’s status as a global music powerhouse, says Daniel Grimley

Professors from different disciplines will join forces to tackle big societal questions

History centre shut during University of Brighton cuts could continue as autonomous organisation