Professor Julia Black was quoted in this week's Observer outlining the new 'Shape' scheme to promote the arts, humanities and social sciences:
This is about levelling up the agenda. It is a way of establishing equality ... we are not setting up Shape in opposition to Stem, and in fact many scientists and engineers would agree it is wrong to deny that the sort of articulacy and reasoning skills developed by studying history, or theatre, or by learning a foreign language, have the same value as a scientific or mathematical training. But the humanities can sometimes be dismissed as ‘soft subjects’ and not given the same credit, which matters when it comes to basic education and to funding research. They can be a bit of a blind spot and that is damaging.
click here to read the Observer article in full