@Mr0 @albertcardona

They would close.

There are some options like going into partnership with industry, which is happening, but that can also be ethically dodgy. But no industry wants to partner with a poetry department, so humanities and arts departments are shutting left and right.

And universities actually are shutting. They're merging with other (relatively) nearby universities, but they won't be running two philosophy programmes, so this is effectively a shutdown that (temporarily) preserves one of every department present at either uni.

Alas, the ability to write a very detailed and much beloved book on 15th century chansons doesn't tend to overlap with the ability to conjure large sums of money.

Universities are expensive to run and successive governments have deprived them of all funding sources. A very small number have endowments, but most don't.

It wasn't very long ago that the UK had the lowest rates of university education in Europe by a wide margin. One of the policies of the Blair era was to instead have the highest percentage. However, the coalition and Tory governments were broadly anti-education and wanted to shut many universities but this was wildly unpopular, so they decided to create conditions for universities to fail. Labour has stuck with these policies because of course they have. Universities are failing. Communities are losing their major economic drivers and the home of much of their cultural life. The policy is a success.