- Degree of pain - 9th October 2026
- Writing on the wall? Part one - 8th October 2026
- Lights to green… - 7th October 2026
During 23 years with the BBC, and in a 43 year journalistic career (when he was trained to use clear and simple language, avoiding jargon), for our Editor, Welshman Phil Parry, it was interesting to see that most senior political leaders held humanities degrees, as in the study of Welsh and Politics at Cardiff University (CU), by the First Minister of Wales (FMW) Rhun ap Iorwerth – but new evidence now shows that these may be in decline.
Generally speaking if you want to get ahead in politics it is useful to study for a humanities or law degree.
Margaret Thatcher famously studied Chemistry at Oxford, but she’s the exception which proves the rule.
The Prime Minister (PM) Andy Burnham took an English degree at Cambridge, and the First Minister of Wales (FMW) one in Welsh and Politics at Cardiff University (CU).
How likely is this in future, though, with new research showing a decline in the popularity of these kind of degrees, while science or computing ones are in the ascendancy?
The dire situation for humanities degrees in the United Kingdom (UK) is mirrored around much of the developed world.
In the United States of America (USA) the number of students taking either an English or History degree has fallen by a third over the past decade.
If you drill down the issue becomes even starker.
In the University of Harvard (UoH) only seven per cent of freshers in 2022 said they planned to major in the humanities, compared with nearly thirty per cent in the 1970s.
“We feel like we’re on The Titanic”, one Professor in the Harvard English department told the New Yorker (NY).
Of the 38 countries in the OECD four fifths say that enrolment in the humanities is falling.
The economist Philip Magnusson has looked at the data from 25 disciplines, and has found that among the biggest fallers are: English, History, Philosophy and Religion.
So if you have a degree in any of these (as I do) and want to get into politics, then you need to get a move on as the window may be closing…
The memories of Phil’s decades-long award-winning career in journalism as he was gripped by the rare disabling condition Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia (HSP), have been released in a major book ‘A GOOD STORY’ (which includes his time at the University of Manchester [UoM] studying Politics and Modern History [PMH]). Order it now!
