A related article in the Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/mar/25/higher-education-arts-sciences-bias
*More serious is the bias in the budget and in recent cuts in research spending
that declares science to be more important than anything else. This bias has
become rampant since first adumbrated by Margaret Thatcher in the late-1980s,
though it echoed Lord Snow's "two cultures" divide in the 1950s and Harold
Wilson's claim that only "the white heat of technology" would arrest Britain's
industrial decline. Convinced that the humanities and social sciences were
socialist breeding grounds, Thatcher abolished the autonomous University Grants
Committee and made deep cuts in university finance in 1980-83. Universities were
then invited to bid for new money, but not for social sciences. Within five
years, the education secretary, Lord Baker, brought universities under his
heel.*
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