New College of the Humanities
Encyclopedia
New College of the Humanities (NCH) is a proposed new private for-profit undergraduate college in London, England, the creation of which was announced in June 2011 by the philosopher A.C. Grayling, its founder and first master. It is offering tuition from October 2012 in economics, English, history, law and philosophy for undergraduate degrees with the University of London International Programmes and in addition, it will require all students to work toward a "Diploma of New College" by completing courses in critical thinking, practical ethics, science literacy, and professional skills. The college announced plans to use the University of London's
teaching and student facilities in and around Bloomsbury
but has no formal agreements as yet to do so.
NCH will charge domestic and overseas students annual fees of £18,000, twice the maximum fee publicly funded universities in England may charge domestic students from 2012, with its charitable trust aiming to provide 50 assisted places in the first year, out of 200 overall. In addition to Grayling, 13 senior academics have been named as partners, including the biologist Richard Dawkins
. The college's advisory board includes Zeinab Badawi
of the BBC
, Ian Rumfitt
of Birkbeck College, and the heads of one state and four independent schools.
The announcement attracted a substantial response in the UK, and a significant amount of adverse publicity, where most higher education institutions are publicly funded. London's mayor, Boris Johnson
, welcomed it as a bold experiment, while The Times argued that higher education has been a closed shop in the UK for too long. There was an angry reaction from sections of the academic community. Complaints included that NCH had copied the course descriptions of the University of London's international programmes on its website; was offering the same syllabus with a significantly higher price tag; and that the senior academics involved with the project would in fact do very little of the teaching.
s in the United States, such as Amherst College
. Initial reports said it aimed to offer an education to rival that of Oxford
and Cambridge
, but Grayling said this had been blown out of proportion by press hyperbole. He said he had the idea for the college years ago when he was admissions tutor for an Oxbridge
college, and was turning down 12 good applicants for every successful one. Grayling himself completed his first degree in philosophy in the 1970s as a University of London external student, after registering with the University of Sussex
but finding them not specialist enough. He argues that there is not enough elite university provision in the UK, leading thousands of British students to study in the United States instead. He told The Independent that the headmaster of Winchester College
, an independent secondary school, had said many of his best students failed to get into Oxbridge because of government pressure to increase the number of students from state schools. Grayling has criticized English state examinations, arguing that A-levels do not measure ability adequately.
Grayling said David Willetts
, the universities minister, was told of the project in 2010, and appeared enthusiastic. NCH was first named Grayling Hall, incorporated in July 2010 and registered at an address in Peckham
, south London. The name was changed to New College of the Humanities in February 2011. The warden of New College, Oxford
, who asked Grayling to change the name again to prevent confusion with the Oxford college, said other names Grayling had previously considered were Bloomsbury College and Erasmus College.
Ten million pounds in private equity funding
was subsqeuntly raised to cover costs for two years, with the expectation that NCH would break even by the third. One third of the enterprise is owned by 14 senior academics, including Grayling, and the rest by private investors, including a couple from Switzerland and three British businessmen—Jeremy Gibbs, Matthew Batstone, and Roy W. Brown. Cavendish Corporate Finance LLP were the corporate financiers hired by NCH ltd and raised this 10 million pounds from a range of private investors including a number of prominent individuals from the world of business and finance.
Gibbs, former chairman of Futuretalk plc, deputy chairman of Scientific Digital Imaging PLC and director of Cambridge Venture Management (2000) Ltd, was registered as the CEO, while Charles Watson, chairman of the PR firm Financial Dynamics, was named as non-executive chairman.
Batstone and Brown are non-executive directors; Batstone is the former marketing chief of the Economist Group and a trustee of Bedales
, an independent secondary school, and Brown is the founder of Metier Management Systems. The rest of the management team consists of Jane Phelps, director of external relations, currently head of higher education and careers at Rugby School, and Rosalind Barrs, the registrar, formerly a senior administrator in the philosophy department at Birkbeck.
The 14 academic partners, who are also referred to as The Professoriate, are:
A charitable trust was established, the New College of the Humanities Trust, consisting of Grayling, Gibbs, Batstone, Watson, and Brown. There is also an 11-member advisory board that includes BBC news presenter
Zeinab Badawi
; Ian Rumfitt
chair of the philosophy department at Birkbeck; William Swainson of Bloomsbury Publishing; John Gordon, founder of IQ2, a global forum for live debate; James Lambert, founder of the charity Into University; Barbara Schwepcke, Founder and CEO of Haus Publishing; and the heads of four independent schools, City of London School for Girls
, St Paul's Girls' School
, Rugby
, and Wellington
; and the head of one state school, Walworth Academy
.
The college has as yet no facilities of its own. It plans for its students to register for University of London degrees as external students under the University of London International Programmes, and as such, their students should, upon payment of the appropriate fees, have access to the university's facilities, including the Senate House Library
and University of London Union
. NCH plans to lease a building in Bloomsbury and rent lecture theatres from the university. It said it had block-booked rooms for its first-year students with a student accommodation provider in or near Bloomsbury. The master of Birkbeck College said on June 6 that there was no agreement between NCH and Birkbeck—which is based in Bloomsbury and affiliated with the University of London—to share facilities.
NCH plans to offer classes from October 2012, with annual fees of £18,000, twice the maximum fee public universities in England may charge domestic students from 2012, and similar to those for private universities in the United States. The New College of the Humanities Trust aims to provide 50 assisted places in the first year, out of 200 places overall. The grants will consist of 100 percent means-tested scholarships, and exhibitions
where the student will pay £7,200 a year. The aim for future years is to have more than 30 percent of its students receiving grants. The college plans eventually to recruit 375 students each year, with no more than one third from outside the UK. Overseas and domestic students will pay the same fees.
The Guardian writes that the same degree courses are available from Birkbeck
, Goldsmiths, and Royal Holloway
colleges for £9,000 or less. Academics complained that the syllabuses had been copied from the University of London's website, and had simply been repackaged. Amanda Vickery
, an historian at Queen Mary, University of London
, posted on Twitter
: "Perplexed to see my own course 'Experience, Culture & Identity: Women's lives in England 1688-1850' available from NCH".Guttenplan, D.D. "Plans to Found Pricey New College Raise Eyebrows", The New York Times, June 13, 2011.
The University of London said it had no formal agreement with NCH concerning academic matters, and that NCH had not yet applied for recognition as an "Independent Teaching Institution" associated with the university's external programme, which would normally require a track record. It said it was legitimate for NCH to provide tuition to students pursuing its international programmes, as other colleges do in the UK and elsewhere, for a fee in most cases of under £1,500 per annum. Grayling told Times Higher Education that NCH's higher fees reflected tuition costs, including the cost of the additional courses required for the Diploma of New College. He said: "What's important about a degree is how it is taught and who it is taught by."
of the University of East Anglia, and philosophers Ken Gemes
from Birkbeck and Naomi Goulder from Bristol University—will recruit and lead the teaching staff. Lipscomb wrote that the college plans to offer students 12–13 contact hours a week, including two tutorials, one of them one-to-one.
The 14 academics named as partners will do some teaching, though most hold full-time jobs elsewhere, several in the United States. The NCH website refers to them as its professoriate, which led to criticism that it will be a largely absent one. Grayling responded that at least one well-known academic would deliver a lecture every day of the academic year, though most of the teaching will be done by others. The Guardian wrote that Dawkins, Krauss, and Jones will deliver two lectures a week in scientific literacy between them, over two terms, and Blackburn 10–20 lectures a year. Krauss, a physics professor at Arizona State University, said he would visit for a month during the first year, and would give 10-15 lectures. Zuckerman will teach up to 20 hours; he said the pay was comparable to fees for visiting professors in the United States. Colley and Cannadine—married to each other and employed by Princeton University
—will teach at NCH for one hour each in the first academic year.Vasagar, Jeevan and Booth, Robert. "AC Grayling's private university accused of copying syllabuses", The Guardian, June 7, 2011. Singer, also employed by Princeton, agreed to give one lecture in the first year, but told The Guardian he might do more.
, endorsed it; and London's mayor, Boris Johnson
, called it the boldest experiment in higher education in the UK since the foundation in 1983 of the University of Buckingham
, the UK's first private university; he wrote that it showed the way ahead for academics demoralized by government interference with admissions procedures and "scapegoated for the weaknesses of the schools." The Times argued that higher education has been a closed shop in the UK for too long, that all over the world there are excellent universities run independently of the state, and that in its conception NCH is teaching by example. The Economist wrote that there is a market for the idea because of the increasing number of qualified British students who fail to get into their university of choice, in part because of pressure on the top universities from the Office for Fair Access
to increase the number of students from state schools; they added that "a 'toffs’ college' of well-heeled Oxbridge near-misses is a provocative concept." The Harvard historian Niall Ferguson, one of the college's partners, said he had read the criticism of NCH with incredulity: "Anyone who cares about the humanities will be cheering Anthony Grayling."
The news triggered accusations of elitism. Literary critic Terry Eagleton
called the college "odious," arguing that it was taking advantage of a crumbling university system to make money; Grayling responded that Eagleton himself teaches a few weeks a year at the University of Notre Dame
in Indiana, a private - though non-profit - university. Lawyer David Allen Green
, writing in the New Statesman, described NCH as a "sham" and a "branding exercise with purchased celebrity endorsements and a PR-driven website." Several academics complained in a letter to The Guardian that its creation was a setback for the campaign against the current government's
policy of commercializing education, and were joined by 34 of Grayling's former colleagues at Birkbeck, who questioned how much teaching the college's 14 academic partners would actually do. Terence Kealey
suggested it was dangerous to have a university funded by private equity, citing the possible collapse in 2011 of Southern Cross private nursing homes.
Toby Young
argued in The Daily Telegraph that the reaction was part of a left-wing campaign to retain state control over education, involving, he wrote, public sector unions, university lecturers, and the Socialist Workers Party. Simon Jenkins
wrote that the country's professors, lecturers and student trade unionists were "united in arms against what they most hate and fear: academic celebrity, student fees, profit and loss, one-to-one tutorials and America."
Grayling responded to the criticism by arguing that NCH is trying to keep humanities teaching alive. He said he felt persecuted by the negative reaction: "My whole record, everything I have written, is turned on its head. Now I am a bastard capitalist. It is really upsetting. ... Education is a public good and we should be spending more on it and it shouldn't be necessary to do this, but standing on the sidelines moaning and wailing is not an option." A dozen protesters heckled him at Foyles book shop in London on June 7 during a debate about cuts to arts funding, one of them shouting that Grayling had "no right to speak." A protester let off a smoke bomb, and 100 people were evacuated from the store. Later in the week police removed protesters from a British Humanist Association
talk by Richard Dawkins.
University of London
-20th century:Shortly after 6 Burlington Gardens was vacated, the University went through a period of rapid expansion. Bedford College, Royal Holloway and the London School of Economics all joined in 1900, Regent's Park College, which had affiliated in 1841 became an official divinity school of the...
teaching and student facilities in and around Bloomsbury
Bloomsbury
-Places:* Bloomsbury is an area in central London.* Bloomsbury , related local government unit* Bloomsbury, New Jersey, New Jersey, USA* Bloomsbury , listed on the NRHP in Maryland...
but has no formal agreements as yet to do so.
NCH will charge domestic and overseas students annual fees of £18,000, twice the maximum fee publicly funded universities in England may charge domestic students from 2012, with its charitable trust aiming to provide 50 assisted places in the first year, out of 200 overall. In addition to Grayling, 13 senior academics have been named as partners, including the biologist Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
Clinton Richard Dawkins, FRS, FRSL , known as Richard Dawkins, is a British ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author...
. The college's advisory board includes Zeinab Badawi
Zeinab Badawi
Zeinab Badawi is a Sudanese-British television and radio journalist. She was the first presenter of the ITV Morning News , and co-presented Channel 4 News with Jon Snow , before joining BBC News. Badawi is currently the presenter of World News Today broadcast on both BBC Four and BBC World News...
of the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
, Ian Rumfitt
Ian Rumfitt
Ian Rumfitt is a British philosopher currently serving as Professor of Philosophy at Birkbeck College, University of London.-Life:He was educated at Balliol College, Oxford and Princeton University, and has taught at Keele University, the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and at University...
of Birkbeck College, and the heads of one state and four independent schools.
The announcement attracted a substantial response in the UK, and a significant amount of adverse publicity, where most higher education institutions are publicly funded. London's mayor, Boris Johnson
Boris Johnson
Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson is a British journalist and Conservative Party politician, who has been the elected Mayor of London since 2008...
, welcomed it as a bold experiment, while The Times argued that higher education has been a closed shop in the UK for too long. There was an angry reaction from sections of the academic community. Complaints included that NCH had copied the course descriptions of the University of London's international programmes on its website; was offering the same syllabus with a significantly higher price tag; and that the senior academics involved with the project would in fact do very little of the teaching.
Origins
The college has said it will model itself on liberal arts collegeLiberal arts college
A liberal arts college is one with a primary emphasis on undergraduate study in the liberal arts and sciences.Students in the liberal arts generally major in a particular discipline while receiving exposure to a wide range of academic subjects, including sciences as well as the traditional...
s in the United States, such as Amherst College
Amherst College
Amherst College is a private liberal arts college located in Amherst, Massachusetts, United States. Amherst is an exclusively undergraduate four-year institution and enrolled 1,744 students in the fall of 2009...
. Initial reports said it aimed to offer an education to rival that of Oxford
University of Oxford
The University of Oxford is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096...
and Cambridge
University of Cambridge
The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...
, but Grayling said this had been blown out of proportion by press hyperbole. He said he had the idea for the college years ago when he was admissions tutor for an Oxbridge
Oxbridge
Oxbridge is a portmanteau of the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge in England, and the term is now used to refer to them collectively, often with implications of perceived superior social status...
college, and was turning down 12 good applicants for every successful one. Grayling himself completed his first degree in philosophy in the 1970s as a University of London external student, after registering with the University of Sussex
University of Sussex
The University of Sussex is an English public research university situated next to the East Sussex village of Falmer, within the city of Brighton and Hove. The University received its Royal Charter in August 1961....
but finding them not specialist enough. He argues that there is not enough elite university provision in the UK, leading thousands of British students to study in the United States instead. He told The Independent that the headmaster of Winchester College
Winchester College
Winchester College is an independent school for boys in the British public school tradition, situated in Winchester, Hampshire, the former capital of England. It has existed in its present location for over 600 years and claims the longest unbroken history of any school in England...
, an independent secondary school, had said many of his best students failed to get into Oxbridge because of government pressure to increase the number of students from state schools. Grayling has criticized English state examinations, arguing that A-levels do not measure ability adequately.
Grayling said David Willetts
David Willetts
David Linsay Willetts is a British Conservative Party politician and the Minister of State for Universities and Science. He is the Member of Parliament representing the constituency of Havant in Hampshire.-Education:...
, the universities minister, was told of the project in 2010, and appeared enthusiastic. NCH was first named Grayling Hall, incorporated in July 2010 and registered at an address in Peckham
Peckham
Peckham is a district in south London, England, located in the London Borough of Southwark. It is situated south-east of Charing Cross. The area is identified in the London Plan as one of 35 major centres in Greater London...
, south London. The name was changed to New College of the Humanities in February 2011. The warden of New College, Oxford
New College, Oxford
New College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom.- Overview :The College's official name, College of St Mary, is the same as that of the older Oriel College; hence, it has been referred to as the "New College of St Mary", and is now almost always...
, who asked Grayling to change the name again to prevent confusion with the Oxford college, said other names Grayling had previously considered were Bloomsbury College and Erasmus College.
Funding and governance
Intial "seed capital" of £200,000 for the project was provided, according to the Guardian, by the financier Peter Hall.Ten million pounds in private equity funding
Private equity firm
A private equity firm is an investment manager that makes investments in the private equity of operating companies through a variety of loosely affiliated investment strategies including leveraged buyout, venture capital, and growth capital...
was subsqeuntly raised to cover costs for two years, with the expectation that NCH would break even by the third. One third of the enterprise is owned by 14 senior academics, including Grayling, and the rest by private investors, including a couple from Switzerland and three British businessmen—Jeremy Gibbs, Matthew Batstone, and Roy W. Brown. Cavendish Corporate Finance LLP were the corporate financiers hired by NCH ltd and raised this 10 million pounds from a range of private investors including a number of prominent individuals from the world of business and finance.
Gibbs, former chairman of Futuretalk plc, deputy chairman of Scientific Digital Imaging PLC and director of Cambridge Venture Management (2000) Ltd, was registered as the CEO, while Charles Watson, chairman of the PR firm Financial Dynamics, was named as non-executive chairman.
Batstone and Brown are non-executive directors; Batstone is the former marketing chief of the Economist Group and a trustee of Bedales
Bedales School
Bedales School is a co-educational independent school situated in Hampshire, in the south east of England. Founded in 1893 by John Haden Badley in reaction to the limitations of conventional Victorian schools, today the school is one of the most expensive in the UK, charging £9,985 per term for a...
, an independent secondary school, and Brown is the founder of Metier Management Systems. The rest of the management team consists of Jane Phelps, director of external relations, currently head of higher education and careers at Rugby School, and Rosalind Barrs, the registrar, formerly a senior administrator in the philosophy department at Birkbeck.
The 14 academic partners, who are also referred to as The Professoriate, are:
- philosophers A.C. Grayling, Simon BlackburnSimon BlackburnSimon Blackburn is a British academic philosopher known for his work in quasi-realism and his efforts to popularise philosophy. He recently retired as professor of philosophy at the University of Cambridge, but remains a distinguished research professor of philosophy at the University of North...
and Peter SingerPeter SingerPeter Albert David Singer is an Australian philosopher who is the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University and Laureate Professor at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at the University of Melbourne... - historians David CannadineDavid CannadineSir David Nicholas Cannadine, FBA is a British historian, known for a number of books, including The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy and Ornamentalism. He is also notable as a commentator and broadcaster on British public life, especially the monarchy. He serves as the generaleditor...
, Linda ColleyLinda ColleyLinda Colley, CBE, FBA, FRSL, FRHistS is a historian of Britain, empire and nationalism. She is Shelby M. C. Davis 1958 Professor of History at Princeton University in the United States.-Early life and education:...
, and Niall FergusonNiall FergusonNiall Campbell Douglas Ferguson is a British historian. His specialty is financial and economic history, particularly hyperinflation and the bond markets, as well as the history of colonialism..... - economist Partha DasguptaPartha DasguptaProfessor Sir Partha Sarathi Dasgupta, FRS, FBA , is the Frank Ramsey Professor of Economics at the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom; Fellow of St John's College, Cambridge; Honorary Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge; and Professor of Environmental and Development Economics at the...
- scientists Richard DawkinsRichard DawkinsClinton Richard Dawkins, FRS, FRSL , known as Richard Dawkins, is a British ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author...
(will be Professor of Evolutionary Biology), Steve JonesSteve Jones (biologist)John Stephen Jones is a Welsh geneticist and from 1995 to 1999 and 2008 to June 2010 was Head of the Department of Genetics, Evolution and Environment at University College London. His studies are conducted in the Galton Laboratory. He is also a television presenter and a prize-winning author on...
(will be Professor of Biological Sciences), Lawrence M. KraussLawrence M. KraussLawrence Maxwell Krauss is an American theoretical physicist who is professor of physics, Foundation Professor of the School of Earth and Space Exploration, and director of the Origins Project at the Arizona State University. He is the author of several bestselling books, including The Physics of...
(will be Professor of Science), and Steven PinkerSteven PinkerSteven Arthur Pinker is a Canadian-American experimental psychologist, cognitive scientist, linguist and popular science author... - legal scholars Ronald DworkinRonald DworkinRonald Myles Dworkin, QC, FBA is an American philosopher and scholar of constitutional law. He is Frank Henry Sommer Professor of Law and Philosophy at New York University and Emeritus Professor of Jurisprudence at University College London, and has taught previously at Yale Law School and the...
and Adrian ZuckermanAdrian ZuckermanAdrian A. S. Zuckerman is a British legal scholar. He is Professor of Civil Procedure at the University of Oxford and editor of the Civil Justice Quarterly... - literary critic Christopher RicksChristopher RicksSir Christopher Bruce Ricks, FBA is a British literary critic and scholar. He is the William M. and Sara B. Warren Professor of the Humanities at Boston University and Co-Director of the Editorial Institute at Boston University, and was Professor of Poetry at the University of Oxford from 2004...
.
A charitable trust was established, the New College of the Humanities Trust, consisting of Grayling, Gibbs, Batstone, Watson, and Brown. There is also an 11-member advisory board that includes BBC news presenter
News presenter
A news presenter is a person who presents news during a news program in the format of a television show, on the radio or the Internet.News presenters can work in a radio studio, television studio and from remote broadcasts in the field especially weather...
Zeinab Badawi
Zeinab Badawi
Zeinab Badawi is a Sudanese-British television and radio journalist. She was the first presenter of the ITV Morning News , and co-presented Channel 4 News with Jon Snow , before joining BBC News. Badawi is currently the presenter of World News Today broadcast on both BBC Four and BBC World News...
; Ian Rumfitt
Ian Rumfitt
Ian Rumfitt is a British philosopher currently serving as Professor of Philosophy at Birkbeck College, University of London.-Life:He was educated at Balliol College, Oxford and Princeton University, and has taught at Keele University, the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and at University...
chair of the philosophy department at Birkbeck; William Swainson of Bloomsbury Publishing; John Gordon, founder of IQ2, a global forum for live debate; James Lambert, founder of the charity Into University; Barbara Schwepcke, Founder and CEO of Haus Publishing; and the heads of four independent schools, City of London School for Girls
City of London School for Girls
City of London School for Girls is a girls' independent school located in the City of London, United Kingdom. It is sister school of the City of London School and the City of London Freemen's School .-History:The school was founded by William Ward in 1894...
, St Paul's Girls' School
St Paul's Girls' School
St Paul's Girls' School is a senior independent school, located in Brook Green, Hammersmith, in West London, England.-History:In 1904 a new day school for girls was established by the trustees of the Dean Colet Foundation , which had run St Paul's School for boys since the sixteenth century...
, Rugby
Rugby School
Rugby School is a co-educational day and boarding school located in the town of Rugby, Warwickshire, England. It is one of the oldest independent schools in Britain.-History:...
, and Wellington
Wellington College, Berkshire
-Former pupils:Notable former pupils include historian P. J. Marshall, architect Sir Nicholas Grimshaw, impressionist Rory Bremner, Adolphus Cambridge, 1st Marquess of Cambridge, author Sebastian Faulks, language school pioneer John Haycraft, political journalist Robin Oakley, actor Sir Christopher...
; and the head of one state school, Walworth Academy
Walworth Academy
Walworth Academy is a mixed, non-selective school for pupils from 11 to 18. It opened as an ARK academy in 2007, replacing Walworth School. This school is split up into three sections, Chaplin, Babbage and Seacole. The Chaplin and Babbage blocks are two separate halves of Key Stage 3...
.
Facilities and fees
Senate House (University of London)
Senate House is the administrative centre of the University of London, situated in the heart of Bloomsbury, London between the School of Oriental and African Studies to the north, with the British Museum to the south...
and University of London Union
University of London Union
The University of London Union is the university-wide students' union for the University of London...
. NCH plans to lease a building in Bloomsbury and rent lecture theatres from the university. It said it had block-booked rooms for its first-year students with a student accommodation provider in or near Bloomsbury. The master of Birkbeck College said on June 6 that there was no agreement between NCH and Birkbeck—which is based in Bloomsbury and affiliated with the University of London—to share facilities.
NCH plans to offer classes from October 2012, with annual fees of £18,000, twice the maximum fee public universities in England may charge domestic students from 2012, and similar to those for private universities in the United States. The New College of the Humanities Trust aims to provide 50 assisted places in the first year, out of 200 places overall. The grants will consist of 100 percent means-tested scholarships, and exhibitions
Exhibition (scholarship)
-United Kingdom and Ireland:At the universities of Dublin, Oxford and Cambridge, and at Westminster School, Eton College and Winchester College, and various other UK educational establishments, an exhibition is a financial award or grant to an individual student, normally on grounds of merit. The...
where the student will pay £7,200 a year. The aim for future years is to have more than 30 percent of its students receiving grants. The college plans eventually to recruit 375 students each year, with no more than one third from outside the UK. Overseas and domestic students will pay the same fees.
Courses
The college will offer tuition for eight degree courses in five subject areas: an LLB (law), BSc in economics, and six joint honours BAs in combinations of literature, history and philosophy. In addition, students will study three core subjects—logic and critical thinking, science literacy, and applied ethics—and complete a professional skills course. The science literacy course will include as its teachers, Richard Dawkins (Professor of Evolutionary Biology NCH), Steve Jones (Professor of Biological Sciences NCH) lecturing on genetics, biodiversity and climate change and Lawrence Krauss (Professor of Science NCH) teaching cosmology and particle physics. Graduates will receive a University of London degree for completing the degree course, and a Diploma of New College for completing the four compulsory courses. They will then be awarded, for example, a BA Hons (London) DNC.The Guardian writes that the same degree courses are available from Birkbeck
Birkbeck, University of London
Birkbeck, University of London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and a constituent college of the federal University of London. It offers many Master's and Bachelor's degree programmes that can be studied either part-time or full-time, though nearly all teaching is...
, Goldsmiths, and Royal Holloway
Royal Holloway, University of London
Royal Holloway, University of London is a constituent college of the University of London. The college has three faculties, 18 academic departments, and about 8,000 undergraduate and postgraduate students from over 130 different countries...
colleges for £9,000 or less. Academics complained that the syllabuses had been copied from the University of London's website, and had simply been repackaged. Amanda Vickery
Amanda Vickery
Amanda Vickery is a British historian and television presenter.She graduated from the former Bedford College, London where she completed her PhD in Modern History...
, an historian at Queen Mary, University of London
Queen Mary, University of London
Queen Mary, University of London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and a constituent college of the federal University of London...
, posted on Twitter
Twitter
Twitter is an online social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based posts of up to 140 characters, informally known as "tweets".Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and launched that July...
: "Perplexed to see my own course 'Experience, Culture & Identity: Women's lives in England 1688-1850' available from NCH".Guttenplan, D.D. "Plans to Found Pricey New College Raise Eyebrows", The New York Times, June 13, 2011.
The University of London said it had no formal agreement with NCH concerning academic matters, and that NCH had not yet applied for recognition as an "Independent Teaching Institution" associated with the university's external programme, which would normally require a track record. It said it was legitimate for NCH to provide tuition to students pursuing its international programmes, as other colleges do in the UK and elsewhere, for a fee in most cases of under £1,500 per annum. Grayling told Times Higher Education that NCH's higher fees reflected tuition costs, including the cost of the additional courses required for the Diploma of New College. He said: "What's important about a degree is how it is taught and who it is taught by."
Teaching
NCH says it will offer a 10:1 student-teacher ratio. Subject-area convenors—including historian Suzannah LipscombSuzannah Lipscomb
Suzannah Lipscomb is a British academic, author and media historian specialising in the sixteenth century. She read Modern History at Lincoln College, Oxford where she received a Double First class Honours degree, followed by a distinction for her Masters in Historical Research...
of the University of East Anglia, and philosophers Ken Gemes
Ken Gemes
Ken Gemes is a philosopher with a primary interest in Nietzsche. He is Professor of Philosophy at Birkbeck, University of London and joined the New College of the Humanities in London in 2011 as subject area convenor for diploma subjects. Prior to joining Birkbeck, Gemes taught at Yale University...
from Birkbeck and Naomi Goulder from Bristol University—will recruit and lead the teaching staff. Lipscomb wrote that the college plans to offer students 12–13 contact hours a week, including two tutorials, one of them one-to-one.
The 14 academics named as partners will do some teaching, though most hold full-time jobs elsewhere, several in the United States. The NCH website refers to them as its professoriate, which led to criticism that it will be a largely absent one. Grayling responded that at least one well-known academic would deliver a lecture every day of the academic year, though most of the teaching will be done by others. The Guardian wrote that Dawkins, Krauss, and Jones will deliver two lectures a week in scientific literacy between them, over two terms, and Blackburn 10–20 lectures a year. Krauss, a physics professor at Arizona State University, said he would visit for a month during the first year, and would give 10-15 lectures. Zuckerman will teach up to 20 hours; he said the pay was comparable to fees for visiting professors in the United States. Colley and Cannadine—married to each other and employed by Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
—will teach at NCH for one hour each in the first academic year.Vasagar, Jeevan and Booth, Robert. "AC Grayling's private university accused of copying syllabuses", The Guardian, June 7, 2011. Singer, also employed by Princeton, agreed to give one lecture in the first year, but told The Guardian he might do more.
Reception
Grayling said he had received 900 expressions of interest from potential students and 80 job applications in the first week. Britain's former prime minister, Tony BlairTony Blair
Anthony Charles Lynton Blair is a former British Labour Party politician who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2 May 1997 to 27 June 2007. He was the Member of Parliament for Sedgefield from 1983 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007...
, endorsed it; and London's mayor, Boris Johnson
Boris Johnson
Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson is a British journalist and Conservative Party politician, who has been the elected Mayor of London since 2008...
, called it the boldest experiment in higher education in the UK since the foundation in 1983 of the University of Buckingham
University of Buckingham
The University of Buckingham is an independent, non-sectarian, research and teaching university located in Buckingham, Buckinghamshire, England, on the banks of the River Great Ouse. It was originally founded as Buckingham University College in the 1970s and received its Royal Charter from the...
, the UK's first private university; he wrote that it showed the way ahead for academics demoralized by government interference with admissions procedures and "scapegoated for the weaknesses of the schools." The Times argued that higher education has been a closed shop in the UK for too long, that all over the world there are excellent universities run independently of the state, and that in its conception NCH is teaching by example. The Economist wrote that there is a market for the idea because of the increasing number of qualified British students who fail to get into their university of choice, in part because of pressure on the top universities from the Office for Fair Access
Office for Fair Access
The Office for Fair Access is a non-departmental public body responsible for ensuring that any university or higher education institution in England which plans to charge variable tuition fees starting with the academic year 2006/7 has in place an acceptable plan to promote equitable access among...
to increase the number of students from state schools; they added that "a 'toffs’ college' of well-heeled Oxbridge near-misses is a provocative concept." The Harvard historian Niall Ferguson, one of the college's partners, said he had read the criticism of NCH with incredulity: "Anyone who cares about the humanities will be cheering Anthony Grayling."
The news triggered accusations of elitism. Literary critic Terry Eagleton
Terry Eagleton
Terence Francis Eagleton FBA is a British literary theorist and critic, who is regarded as one of Britain's most influential living literary critics...
called the college "odious," arguing that it was taking advantage of a crumbling university system to make money; Grayling responded that Eagleton himself teaches a few weeks a year at the University of Notre Dame
University of Notre Dame
The University of Notre Dame du Lac is a Catholic research university located in Notre Dame, an unincorporated community north of the city of South Bend, in St. Joseph County, Indiana, United States...
in Indiana, a private - though non-profit - university. Lawyer David Allen Green
David Allen Green
David Allen Green is an English lawyer and writer. He is also legal correspondent for the New Statesman; and blogs as "Jack of Kent"....
, writing in the New Statesman, described NCH as a "sham" and a "branding exercise with purchased celebrity endorsements and a PR-driven website." Several academics complained in a letter to The Guardian that its creation was a setback for the campaign against the current government's
United Kingdom coalition government (2010–present)
The ConservativeLiberal Democrat coalition is the present Government of the United Kingdom, formed after the 2010 general election. The Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats entered into discussions which culminated in the 2010 coalition agreement, setting out a programme for government...
policy of commercializing education, and were joined by 34 of Grayling's former colleagues at Birkbeck, who questioned how much teaching the college's 14 academic partners would actually do. Terence Kealey
Terence Kealey
Terence Kealey is the current Vice-Chancellor of the University of Buckingham, Britain's only private university. Prior to his tenure at Buckingham, Kealey lectured in clinical biochemistry at Cambridge University...
suggested it was dangerous to have a university funded by private equity, citing the possible collapse in 2011 of Southern Cross private nursing homes.
Toby Young
Toby Young
Toby Young, MA, FRSA is a British journalist and the author of How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, the tale of his stint in New York as a contributing editor at Vanity Fair magazine...
argued in The Daily Telegraph that the reaction was part of a left-wing campaign to retain state control over education, involving, he wrote, public sector unions, university lecturers, and the Socialist Workers Party. Simon Jenkins
Simon Jenkins
Sir Simon David Jenkins is a British newspaper columnist and author, and since November 2008 has been chairman of the National Trust. He currently writes columns for both The Guardian and London's Evening Standard, and was previously a commentator for The Times, which he edited from 1990 to 1992...
wrote that the country's professors, lecturers and student trade unionists were "united in arms against what they most hate and fear: academic celebrity, student fees, profit and loss, one-to-one tutorials and America."
Grayling responded to the criticism by arguing that NCH is trying to keep humanities teaching alive. He said he felt persecuted by the negative reaction: "My whole record, everything I have written, is turned on its head. Now I am a bastard capitalist. It is really upsetting. ... Education is a public good and we should be spending more on it and it shouldn't be necessary to do this, but standing on the sidelines moaning and wailing is not an option." A dozen protesters heckled him at Foyles book shop in London on June 7 during a debate about cuts to arts funding, one of them shouting that Grayling had "no right to speak." A protester let off a smoke bomb, and 100 people were evacuated from the store. Later in the week police removed protesters from a British Humanist Association
British Humanist Association
The British Humanist Association is an organisation of the United Kingdom which promotes Humanism and represents "people who seek to live good lives without religious or superstitious beliefs." The BHA is committed to secularism, human rights, democracy, egalitarianism and mutual respect...
talk by Richard Dawkins.
See also
- BPP University College of Professional StudiesBPP University College of Professional StudiesBPP University College is a private university college in England.The university is owned and run by BPP Holdings, a United Kingdom-based provider of professional and academic education that is part of the American higher education company Apollo Group which owns the University of Phoenix and ...
- Education in EnglandEducation in EnglandEducation in England is overseen by the Department for Education and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. Local authorities take responsibility for implementing policy for public education and state schools at a regional level....
- Higher Education Act 2004Higher Education Act 2004The Higher Education Act 2004 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom which introduced several changes to the higher education system in the United Kingdom, the most important and controversial being a major change to the funding of universities, and the operation of tuition fees, which...
- Regent's CollegeRegent's CollegeRegent's College is located in Regent's Park, London, England. It is one of the two largest groups of buildings in the park, along with the London Zoo, and was built on the site of South Villa, one of the original eight Regent's Park villas....
Further reading
- King, Roger. "Presentation to the all-parliamentary group. Private higher education: private gain or public interest?, House of Lords, June 16, 2009.
- "The growth of private and for-profit higher education providers in the UK", Universities UK, March 18, 2010.
- "Securing a sustainable future for higher education in England" (the Browne report), Independent Review of Higher Education Funding And Student Finance, October 12, 2010.
- "Survey of private and for-profit providers of Higher Education in the UK 2009/10", Higher Education Statistics Agency, April 14, 2011.