Is there some hard evidence on the financial situation of British universities? So far, a lot seems to be anecdotal. If a university is in real financial dire straits, surely they would close expensive-to-teach subjects first? Humanities are, on the whole, cheap-to-teach "cash cows" for most unis.

Judging from the available data, most unis still run a surplus. The situation at OBU looks bad, though. Overall, however, the culling of humanities programmes seems to be more driven by ideology than economic factors: www.hesa.ac.uk/data-and-ana...