University needs complete change of structure

The Gazette [March 29] is quite right to describe the University of Kent’s decision to cut courses as “devastation”.

The University of Kent was one of several founded in the 1960s to expand higher education. Some of these universities, Warwick and York, are now members of the elite Russell Group of universities.

But Kent has persistently lagged behind, as demonstrated by its falling rankings. Students and staff at University of Kent are now suffering because of the inefficiencies of overbureaucratic senior administrators, cutting courses and selling land the university needs for itself.

Closure of the philosophy

department is particularly disgraceful. In narrow business terms this makes sense as the department is currently too small. But philosophy is essential to underpin every quality university discipline. Artificial intelligence and consciousness studies, aspects of philosophy, are currently part of an industrial revolution which no reputable university can afford to ignore. Foundation of the Kent and Medway Medical School is key to academic advances in our region. This requires the development of new university departments along with major shifts in the focus of those that already exist.

It is ridiculous to split academic teaching for a single teaching hospital between two separate universities.

Many individual states in America, notably California, have combined public higher education into large universities with comprehensive ranges of subjects. The same has recently happened in Manchester, where three institutions have been combined into one large university of worldranking stature.

We need to compete in Kent by creating a new quality institution with a comprehensive portfolio of disciplines, including medicine and dentistry.

This implies that University of Kent, Canterbury Christ Church University and University of Greenwich must be amalgamated. The new university should be funded to compete with, and advance from, the standards of the Russell Group universities.