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Save Middlesex Philosophy

Jender5 Comments

The petition now has over 9000 signatures, and they’re aiming for 10,000 by the end of the day. Go here to sign it.

    Other things you can do

1. Send emails to these people:
Michael Driscoll, vice-chancellor of the university – m.driscoll@mdx.ac.uk
Waqar Ahmad, deputy vice-chancellor, research and enterprise – w.ahmad@mdx.ac.uk
Margaret House, deputy vice-chancellor, academic – m.house@mdx.ac.uk
Ed Esche, dean of the School of Arts & Education – e.esche@mdx.ac.uk

2. If it’s feasible for you, get all members of your department to sign a collective letter. Send it to the above addresses, and also send a copy to the campaign: savemdxphil@gmail.com,

5 thoughts on “Save Middlesex Philosophy”

  1. Students demonstrating against the University’s decision to ‘phase out philosophy’ are now occupying part of the Mansion House building of the Trent Park campus; see the facebook group Save Middlesex Philosophy! for photos.

    All staff (including me) and students in Philosophy at Middlesex are very grateful for the support we have received in this campaign. Keep it up! Please help us reach 10,000 signatures on our petition by the end of the day.

  2. ss, always good to hear about people actively giving a toss about an important issue. very best of luck to you all (sickening as it is that luck need even be invoked)!

  5. Thanks for the link. The Middlesex campaign page takes issue with some of what is said in the article. You can read the campaign page here. Particular points worth noting are ‘the university states that Philosophy has ‘only 12 students each year’. But this applies only to the BA. We teach philosophy to under-graduate students on other degrees, and large numbers of post-graduate students. On the School’s own credit count, our full-time equivalent (FTE) student numbers for 2009-10 come to 112.5. These 112.5 FTE are taught by 6 Philosophy staff, of whom only 4 are on the ‘core’ School budget; the other 2 salaries are paid out of research income (RAE income or ‘QR’; more on this in a moment), of which they represent less than half.’

    Also, ‘Some of the university’s larger and more vocational teaching areas, such as Business, obviously generate more income than its smaller humanities subjects. From 2003-2009, however, a significant portion of Middlesex Philosophy’s research income was actually used to support research in Business and Management, which performed poorly in RAE2001. Philosophy’s annual Research Assessment Income is currently worth £173,260: our six members of staff generate no less than 5% of the university’s total research income, a proportion that is around six times more than the per capita university average.

    In 2006 Philosophy also won a substantial 3-year AHRC grant (‘Concept and Form’) worth £230,000, and a new AHRC grant application, for a project on transdisciplinarity, was submitted earlier this spring. We are well-placed to make similar bids in the future. Incredibly, if Philosophy is closed down and the staff made redundant, Middlesex University will nevertheless continue to receive our c. £170,000/year research funding through to the beginning of the next funding cycle (i.e. probably to 2015 or 2016). Meanwhile, at the same time that humanities programmes like Philosophy are being closed down, spending on administrative salaries and consultant fees has rapidly increased.’

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