Only 21 British universities now offer single-honours theology and religious studies degrees, as student numbers decline and departments shut or merge. Academics at a Religion Media Centre briefing considered the reasons for the decline, amid calls to reimagine the purpose and content of the discipline, challenge misconceptions and communicate well with schools and parents. Ruth Peacock reports
The number of British universities offering single-honours degrees in theology and religious studies (TRS) degrees has fallen to 21.
Driven by financial pressures and falling demand, departments most recently have shut at Kent, Wolverhampton and Bath Spa; the course at Cardiff has been reduced to one joint honours degree; and the course at Liverpool Hope University, set up by Anglicans and Catholics, is reducing staff from six to two.
A Religion Media Centre briefing this week brought together academics, education leaders and campaigners to examine why student progression from A-level to university is faltering, and what can be done to strengthen the subject’s place in higher education.
The speakers were: Dr Tim Hutchings, of Theology and Religious Studies UK, Nottingham University; Mathew Guest, professor of sociology of religion at Durham University; Dr Suzanne Owen, British Association for the Study of Religions, Leeds University; Dr Roberto Catello, Liverpool Hope University; Professor Christopher Higgins, former vice-chancellor, Durham University; Professor Gordon Lynch, Edinburgh University; Sarah Lane Cawte, chair, Religious Education Council; Deborah Weston, of the National Association of Teachers of Religious Education.
The issue has been highlighted by the Theos think tank, which has published an open letter highlighting the importance of theology and religion in higher education, and warning universities of the danger of abolishing theology and religious studies departments or reducing staffing levels.
The letter has been signed by 75 people including public figures who studied theology: James Norton, an actor; James Dacre, a theatre director; and Tom Swarbrick, a radio presenter.
It says theology plays a crucial role in the intellectual, ethical and cultural development of communities, providing space for interfaith dialogue in an increasingly polarised world. Young people deserve to be equipped with the tools to navigate a complex, diverse and pluralistic world and to wrestle with moral, ethical and spiritual challenges and ideas.
The scale of the problem
Dr Hutchings outlined the scale of contraction. The Theos letter points out 21 providers of single-honours degrees in England and Wales. But if combined degrees were included, the figure was closer to 38 he said. Statistics had shown that there had been a decline in the number of people taking the single-honours courses.
Departments such as his at Nottingham were often merged and absorbed into larger administrative units, causing anxiety that students would not recognise that TRS was a defined subject area. There were bureaucratic reasons for creating big teams “but something is lost as well”, he said.
Dr Catello, the union official representing religious teachers at Liverpool Hope, said the staff cuts came as a shock “particularly because of the ecumenical identity of the institution, which was born out of the merging of religious colleges and therefore has an obviously Christian identity and values enshrined in the governance documents”.
The reason given was financial, with the university facing a £2.5 million deficit at the end of this financial year. Ten per cent of total teaching staff at the university faced redundancy.
Professor Higgins set out the issue: “Universities now receive the majority of their income in the form of student fees, so any department that simply fails to attract students will be forced by the university to shrink, merge or close.”
There were other larger issues at play. Professor Lynch referred to changes in the higher education sector with the removal of student number caps, allowing expansion of the Russell Group of 24 “elite” universities that affected recruitment at places such as Kent.
Dr Guest said secularisation has also played a part. In the past few decades, he added, “Religion and religious identities have really been sidelined within a range of different disciplines, to the point where expertise in the area has been relatively siloed.”
Professor Higgins was asked whether, when university committees assembled to decide on the closure of departments, it ever crossed their mind to think: “No one believes that any more, and therefore we should close that department down.”
Immediately, he replied: “Not at all. No. It’s primarily done on financial reasons, because if you don’t recruit students, you don’t get resources and funding.”
He was keen to set out three key issues: “The question is not why universities are closing TRS departments, but what the departments themselves should be doing to adapt.”
First, he said, universities depended on student fees, so subjects that cannot attract students will shrink. Second, the purpose of TRS must be clear — whether broad education or ministerial training. Third, competition from hundreds of alternative providers, many Christian colleges, is drawing students and public funds away from universities.
Attracting students
Professor Lynch, now at Edinburgh but was previously at Kent, where the closure of the TRS department was announced in 2024, said the introduction of £9,000 fees had led to students considering the value of subjects to their future career, pushing them towards vocational courses.
Ms Weston said economic security was high on the list of concern for young people and subjects that could lead to high earning professions, such as law, were attractive. There was a myth, she said, that theology and religious studies had no value, and “that has to be dispelled”.
She cited student testimonies describing religion studies as “instrumental” in shaping their lives. “Only 10 per cent go into teaching. A quarter go into law, social or welfare professions. This is a degree with broad appeal.”
Careers advice produced by the Department for Education was “terrible” in its comment on the value of a theology and religious studies degree, Ms Lane Cawte said. Publications said the degree could lead to a job as a church minister, or a youth worker, or social worker, a list of low-paid jobs.
Course purpose must be clear
Dr Suzanne Evans explained that Theology includes languages, biblical study and practical theology, whereas religious studies includes a sociological, humanities and anthropological focus.
Professor Higgins believed that “good theology departments like Durham’s” offered a broad education, giving a range of skills that can be used in a variety of careers — just as many other liberal arts programmes. But “many theology and religion departments are still seen as being predominantly Christian, and that restricts those who might apply.
The academics on the call were clear that the message needed to get out that this was not the case.
Professor Guest said the proportion of students doing a narrow confessional degree was declining. “Fifty years ago, it would have been dominant but now it’s very much a small minority”, he said. Now, in his department, the TRS course remained a distinctive offer, but there was strong cross-department engagement with, for example, social sciences, anthropology, sociology, classics, philosophy and history.
For Dr Hutchings the idea that TRS was about training for the ministry was 100 years out of date. The degree was now a discipline that offered a liberal arts education, engaging with religious traditions, across departments, with students from all faith traditions and none. He described theology as an exciting intellectual pursuit, finding out what made people tick: “You’re not just studying religious people as kind of objects of study. You’re trying to get inside their heads and see what makes the world work from their perspective.”
Professor Lynch said the study of theology and religion was absolutely essential. “It’s very difficult to think about a major geopolitical issue at the moment in which religion isn’t deeply implicated in some way”, he added, but he acknowledged that the challenge was to communicate this to students from increasingly non-religious backgrounds and think of new ways of imagining the discipline.
He suggested innovation and revealed that Edinburgh was introducing a new course called Understanding Your Value, similar to Yale Divinity School’s Life Worth Living course.
Competition from new providers
Even though there may be fewer university courses for theology leading to ministry, there is disquiet that the study of theology has shifted to new institutions owned by Christian organisations, which have been allowed to offer degrees thanks to changes in the law governing higher education.
Professor Higgins, who is also a member of the National Secular Society’s education forum, is campaigning against public money going to these institutions. There are 450 in total and 24 have a Christian foundation offering theology degrees. For example, he knew of one college run by a Nigerian Pentecostal Church and of another application from a US church wanting to set up a theological college.
He believes these new colleges were not places of education, but indoctrination, with restrictions on academic freedom, and should never have been registered by the Office of Students, enabling them to receive public funds. He said they were diverting millions of pounds of fees away from universities.
Professor Guest said the people attending these colleges were likely to believe in its founding principles and may not be successfully recruited to universities: “They are functioning in a different space, recruiting students who already align with their convictions. We are not necessarily in competition.”
A-level pupils not following through
Dr Hutchings pointed to a mismatch between the high numbers of students taking religions studies A-level and the lower number taking it forward into university. More than 15,000 pupils took the A-level this year, a modest 1.3 per cent decline on the previous year.
“The interest among young people is certainly there,” he said. “What we’re not seeing is the continuation from A-level into university.”
The gap may lie in student perceptions, he added. “I find students sometimes who come up to open days, who have an idea that religious studies is really about learning a lot of facts, and then they’re looking for something at university that will stretch them and inspire them and give the chance to have big debates and explore the big questions.”
This surprised Ms Weston who said RE in schools was absolutely the place where pupils had debates about big questions.
Ms Lane Cawte acknowledged the concern, saying teachers were looking for a way of teaching RE that was “much more dynamic, about lived religious experiences, different belief system, non-religious worldviews, and working with our partners in higher education to ensure that the gap is not as wide as it may have been in the past”.
The RE university pipeline
It wasn’t all depressing, Ms Lane Cawte said. The fact that sixth-formers still wanted to take religious studies, despite a shortage of fully qualified teachers, proved this was an area that interested them. The RE Council was trying to ensure an approach that was dynamic, about lived religious experiences, different belief systems and non-religious worldviews. Teachers were working with partners in higher education “to ensure that the gap was not as wide as it may have been in the past between the approaches that are employed in schools and are employed in higher education”.
But the problem remains that fewer A-level pupils leads to fewer university students, then fewer RE teachers, and so the “doom loop” continues.
Strengthening school–university links is seen as vital. Ms Weston urged universities to work harder in outreach to schools, dispelling the myths about what the courses were like.
Towards a campaign
Dr Hutchings hoped the Theos open letter and continuing debate would give parents and schools the confidence to look more seriously at theology and religious studies as a degree. It can lead to interesting career paths, for example politics or international relations, concluding: “As a society, we gain from deeper understanding of religion and values.”
