British Education Minister Nadhim Zahawi was quick to speak out when an examination board announced plans to bring more diversity to the curriculum leading to the completion of secondary education in English literature.

Poems by dead white men like John Keats, Thomas Hardy, Wilfred Owen, Philip Larkin and Seamus Heaney are replaced with "exciting and diverse" voices in the poetry anthology.

Of the fifteen contemporary and established poets whose works are set to refresh the poetry anthology, fourteen are “people of colour”, including six black women, and one author is of South Asian descent.

Gina Thomas

Features correspondent based in London.

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It was as if the Commission's jargon was intended to activate reflexes in the polarized debate surrounding culture.

Because contrary to what the headlines would have you believe, the new compilation of the anthology is not about eradicating the classics.

These continue to be represented among the 44 poems with Keats, Byron, Wordsworth, Browning, Hardy and other greats.

Rather, the Commission has made an update.

What does a degree bring?

Of course, Zahawi ran into open doors with his criticism.

The Iraqi Kurd, who was born in Baghdad and fled to England with his parents when he was nine, said he learned a lot about his new home from Larkin's poems: "We mustn't deny future students the chance to have similarly strong connections to a great British author nor deny them the joy of knowing his work," the minister tweeted, criticizing the removal of Larkin and Owen as cultural vandalism.

When that same term was applied days later to a university's decision to suspend its English literature course, the Department of Education merely explained that courses that didn't lead to a career or further education failed both students who put in the time and effort , as well as the taxpayer.

Zahawi had just emphasized the value of literature.

His ministry seems to have turned a blind eye to the argument that college is more rewarding than an apprenticeship.

There are also political reasons for this.

The decision of Sheffield Hallam University, one of many universities that adapts its offer to changing circumstances and requirements, is explained by the growing economic justification pressure in higher education, which underlies the utilitarian attitude, the value of a course according to the ability to work and earn money assess graduates.

The humanities subjects are particularly affected because the jobs they usually lead to are statistically less well paid.

The principle of utility has also had an impact on the choice of subjects in schools.

There, the natural sciences are touted as having better career prospects, especially since the government has been striving to become a “scientific superpower”, with the result that interest in the humanities is shrinking even further.

It's a vicious cycle that produces fewer humanities-trained applicants and, on a supply-and-demand basis, prompts colleges to cut affected faculties.

As the Oxford professor for German literature Katrin Kohl reports, the elite universities are not spared.

Higher education regulators have recently threatened fines and funding cuts if the minimum requirements for acceptable degrees are not met.

One of the requirements is that sixty percent of graduates must find a qualified job within fifteen months.

This is intended to put a stop to the academically dubious "Mickey Mouse" bachelor's degree programs that have sprung up since the conversion of technical colleges into universities as part of the university expansion.

But this also affects the humanities, whose students cannot meet the professional criteria as quickly, if at all.

Here, the government's increasingly interventionist higher education policies are mingling with corporate interests and a culture war that sees free speech under threat.

Against this background, the notion that the cultivation of the intellect is an intrinsic value – that education has a social benefit – fades rapidly.