JOHN Armstrong is a rare creature, a university philosopher who thinks far too many humanities academics are talking to the wrong people, each other.

The author of scholarly studies of art, love and beauty, with a PhD from University College, London, politely dismisses the accepted academic wisdom that scholarly specialisation is essential.

And he understands why the British government has decided to stop paying humanities academics at English universities to teach: in future their income will come from the fees students pay to take their courses. No students, no source of salary.

In what looks like the shape of things to come, London Metropolitan University, a new institution with a large enrolment of not especially gifted students, has responded to the government’s increased fees and funding cuts by cutting its courses, from 557 to 160, with many coming from the social sciences and humanities.

Strong stuff, which humanities academics in Britain argue will restrict access to their subjects to rich students with the marks, and cash, to enrol at elite institutions.

For evidence they point to plans by prolific philosopher A. C. Grayling, who is setting up an elite humanities college in London where lecturers will include celebrity scholars historian Niall Ferguson and evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins and where students will enjoy individual tutorials modelled on the Oxford and Cambridge ideal. But at pound stg. 18,000 ($27,900) – twice the capped fee the government has set for an undergraduate year at public institutions – it makes a case that in Britain a top quality humanities education will soon be available only to the affluent.

Armstrong does not endorse any of this but does suggest the historians and philosophers, the linguists and cultural-studies crowd, have in part brought the Cameron government’s decision not to fund liberal arts education on themselves.

“I’m sympathetic with the British government position; when they looked at what is frequently done in the name of the humanities it is understandable that a government under economic pressure should feel they are not a priority for the public purse,” Armstrong says.