Historian. Writer.
UoH's History department is (was?) consistently top performing in terms of research and teaching. Doing everything that a higher education department is supposed to do. And yet that isn't enough.
Glen O'HaraSo it's farewell to the History subject area at the University of Hertfordshire, not the first nor the last to go. One of the best departments in the country, just extinguished like a snap of the fingers. Think of the waste. (1/2)
In late 2023, the Society spent a day with Hertfordshire’s historians. We saw the quality, creativity and distinctiveness of teaching, research and engagement. We were told by a (now departed) senior manager that History was ‘a portfolio the university will guard very carefully’. bit.ly/4hLediN
Glen O'HaraSo it's farewell to the History subject area at the University of Hertfordshire, not the first nor the last to go. One of the best departments in the country, just extinguished like a snap of the fingers. Think of the waste. (1/2)
There has to be a special kind of grief when watching institutions built over generations, in a field of endeavor you gave your adulthood to, destroyed for no good reason while society apparently repudiates everything you thought worthwhile. Words fail me so often these days.
Glen O'HaraSo it's farewell to the History subject area at the University of Hertfordshire, not the first nor the last to go. One of the best departments in the country, just extinguished like a snap of the fingers. Think of the waste. (1/2)
Such a waste. Thinking of my friends & colleagues in History & across Hums. UH History is where I really learned *how* to teach & how to drive my teaching with my research. A dept that really cared about their students. So many brilliant & talented people in my old dept.
Glen O'HaraSo it's farewell to the History subject area at the University of Hertfordshire, not the first nor the last to go. One of the best departments in the country, just extinguished like a snap of the fingers. Think of the waste. (1/2)
Even from across the pond, as we deal with the systematic dismantling of everything that made US higher education the envy of the world, it is so upsetting to see the destruction of UK academia. Of all the stupid things it could copy from the US this is the most evidently self-destructive.
Glen O'HaraSo it's farewell to the History subject area at the University of Hertfordshire, not the first nor the last to go. One of the best departments in the country, just extinguished like a snap of the fingers. Think of the waste. (1/2)
Definitely the case here. In two weeks we find which 9 of 12 in my group will be gone. The other 3 will then have a month to prepare and find hourly-paid replacements for all the classes across two degrees. And supervise 25 PhDs. Plus admin and pastoral care and research. Management doesn’t care.
Glen O'HaraIf you're arriving at uni this autumn, or maybe dropping your kids, remember that there could be a ghostly phalanx of absent redundant staff, lost modules and degraded degrees making it a very unhappy place. It may *look* the same, but it won't *be* the same. www.ft.com/content/e5b0...
Thinking through the unedifying, un-evidence-based rush to an undefined, apparently unmodelled paradigm of 'specialisation, what's being lost/threatened? Herts History was an excellent example of performing to a top standard in REF, but also much more than that. Questions to think with include: 1/4
Glen O'HaraSo it's farewell to the History subject area at the University of Hertfordshire, not the first nor the last to go. One of the best departments in the country, just extinguished like a snap of the fingers. Think of the waste. (1/2)
I think this is the saddest point about the whole debate around UK higher ed right now, when we forget expanding universities was a choice about public good, not employability metrics.
Glen O'HaraBetween the 1970s and 1990s the UK state made a strategic bet to expand Higher Ed. They poured in untold billions of your money. Now it's been handed over to private creditors to burn in a furnace. Then they just laugh at you: at all the taxes you've ever paid or will ever pay. True story. (2/2)