Academic research in the humanities was being stifled by scholarship criteria that prioritised immediate economic benefits over academic merit, academics have warned.
“The humanities offer as many tangible benefits as any other sector, but you can’t quantify the benefits with short-sighted, profit-based methodologies,” Mark Camilleri, a PhD candidate at the University of Malta and the chairman of the National Book Council, told the Times of Malta.
“If a country doesn’t have historians, sociologists or philosophers to make sense of what’s happening, how can politicians enact laws for the good of the country?” he asked.
Under the funding programmes for master’s and PhD degrees, scholarship applications are assessed primarily on the basis of the relevance of the research to national and European strategic priorities and the likely impact of the research on the development of Malta and the local economy.
These criteria make up nearly 80 per cent of the applicant’s final result, with only 20 per cent awarded to the academic merit of the applicant and the research.
Funding shouldn’t be withheld if research is not deemed to be economically useful
“This is unjust to everyone but particularly students from the humanities,” said Mr Camilleri, who recently met with the scholarships department to put forward his view and that of several of his colleagues on the system in place.
“It’s very difficult to quantify the utility of your research in economic terms. If you’re researching Plato or English literature, how can you explain how this will benefit the economy?” Mr Camilleri believes the current criteria prioritise the interests of industry over those of academia, adding that the State’s focus should actually be on funding research that was of less immediate importance to the private sector and, therefore, struggled more for funding.
Kurt Borg, who is reading for a PhD at Staffordshire University in the UK, said the way the scholarship criteria were set up “explicitly favoured” research in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) areas.
In a recent blog post, he derided the system as unfair, arguing that it did not compare like with like, because humanities researchers had to go through “a lot of twisting” to justify their research in economic terms. “At the university, I speak with a lot of people from the humanities who articulate this point,” he wrote. “We all know how these economy-driven criteria are stifling university life and research. And we all know how, as time goes by, these criteria are becoming more and more stringent.
“Research in the humanities – most university research, in fact – shouldn’t be judged according to its economic utility. And funding shouldn’t be withheld if research is not deemed to be economically useful, with the understanding that the same research is deemed to be of good academic quality.”