Cuts ‘risk quality of arts degrees’

Twenty UK universities which are all planning to charge the maximum £9,000 tuition fees from next year failed to make the top 200 for any of the six subjects examined for the QS World University Rankings for arts and humanities.

The rankings looked at how universities worldwide performed in philosophy, modern languages, linguistics, history, geography and English. The table shows that only Oxford and Cambridge made the top 20 for English. Oxford also topped the table for geography, while Cambridge came first for linguistics. York University was ranked in the top 50 in the world for modern languages while Leeds was in the top 50 for linguistics.

The warning over the UK’s competitiveness comes as the country’s higher education sector is facing having all its funding for arts and humanities courses withdrawn as part of an 80 per cent cut to university teaching budgets.