Financial cuts within the arts and humanities are nothing new for students or staff; however, the scale and pace of today’s reductions suggest a deeper crisis is unfolding. As universities across the country make decisions that marginalise the humanities, they reinforce a higher-education landscape that risks becoming an exclusive club for the wealthy.
In 2023, Sheffield Hallam suspended humanities courses, including English Literature, citing “huge reductions of time given to the arts in state schools” as a key factor. Now, the University of Sheffield faces similar challenges.
Scholarship funding for humanities PhDs has been drastically reduced. The new school system has seen departments merging, placing considerable strain on staff. These changes pressure and disrupt learning in the arts and humanities; feelings not mirrored as strongly in STEM faculties due to robust financial protection from the university.
Forge interviewed an MA Cognitive Studies student about her experience securing doctoral funding. She told us:
“As an international student, I do not qualify for student finance or government loans. Which means that I need to secure alternative sources of funding to be able to progress in my studies. I have been a recipient of university scholarships for the duration of my studies at Sheffield. However, securing PhD funding is a lot more complicated.”
She highlighted that the White Rose Arts and Humanities Consortium, previously a major source of doctoral funding across the region, has been scrapped and replaced by a new UK Research Council scheme, the Doctoral Landscape Award (DLA).
This program offers only four fully funded PhD positions for the entire Faculty of Arts and Humanities, which includes four academic schools: History, Philosophy and Digital Humanities; Languages, Arts and Societies; English; and Law. That is one paid scholarship per school.
The student highlighted that competition to secure funding will now be “unbelievably high”.
She went on to tell Forge that information on this year’s funding options had been “almost non-existent”, explaining that students only learnt of the DLA funding on 11 November.
Until mid-November, students knew only that the White Rose scheme had been cut, and unspecified government funding would replace it.
Hopeful applicants were told that DLA applications would close on 21 January, but needed a University of Sheffield offer by 7 January. With Christmas leave disrupting usual processing, the university moved its internal application deadline to 5 December.
This left students with little time to prepare.
“Less than a month between finding out about the funding and having to apply for it has made the application process stressful, to say the least.”
Funding cuts, shortened timelines, and a lack of clear guidance are disproportionately impacting students from working-class backgrounds, who rely heavily on scholarships for doctoral study. This continues to widen the ever-growing class gap in higher education.
National data paints an even starker picture for those reliant on scholarship funding.
The Arts and Humanities Research Council found that PhD scholarship funding is set to fall by 60% in 2026. They identified that students from lower-income and underrepresented backgrounds will be alienated from doctoral studies in the foreseeable future.
Financial cuts reflect more than institutional money-saving at the expense of the Humanities disciplines; they reveal a broader cultural devaluation of the humanities across UK industries.
A spokesperson for the Guardian warned, in response to the closure of Arts and Humanities courses across the country, that these trends “signal a cultural shift that risks leaving future generations without the critical, empathetic and intellectual tools provided by literature.”
The cumulative impact of these cuts, shrinking funding, late announcements, disappearing programmes, and increased administrative strain signals a worrying future for the humanities in UK higher education.
Without significant reinvestment or structural change, access to postgraduate study in these fields may soon be limited to those who can afford it, leaving the disciplines themselves and the critical perspectives they cultivate at risk of fading from the academic landscape completely.
