UK uni cancels offers of 300 students after axing half the arts and language courses

A UK uni has taken back offers to hundreds of incoming students, after closing several arts and languages courses.

The University of Leicester is shutting down the Modern Languages and Film Studies departments. The cancelled courses make up 50 per cent of the School of Arts, Media and Communication. The University College Union (UCU) claims almost 300 students who had received offers to start these courses in September 2026 will have their offers withdrawn.

People who are already studying Modern Languages or Film Studies courses at the uni can finish their degrees, but no new freshers will be recruited. The union says 17 academic jobs in the department will disappear – although some teaching staff will stay until the final cohort of students finish in 2029.

The University of Leicester has also proposed cuts to support staff jobs, the School of Chemistry and the School of Geography, Geology and the Environment.

The uni’s announcement said: “Immediate priorities are to ensure stability and continuity for our current students and to support staff impacted by this decision… the quality of teaching, supervision and academic support will be maintained throughout this period.”

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The uni ended up with a deficit of £3.4 million at the end of the 2024/2025 academic year. The vice-chancellor Professor Sir Nishan Canagarajah wrote in the uni’s annual report: “Higher education in the UK is faced with constrained government funding, stagnant tuition fees, inflation and a continued reliance on international student recruitment in a challenging geopolitical landscape. Due to external factors our costs are growing faster than our income, exacerbated by our historic low cash reserves and low cash generation.”

The UCU has criticised the cuts to languages and film studies since management first proposed them in spring 2025. Staff went on strike in November.

Dr Joseph Choonara, co-chair of Leicester UCU, said: “Shutting Modern Languages courses, something which has already happened at Nottingham University, risks creating a language-learning desert in the East Midlands.”

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Featured image by NotFromUtrecht.