Another UK university shuts down its music department
NewsThe University of Kent has placed 58 academic staff members on notice of redundancy, whole proposing to close the following departments:
Health and Social Care, Journalism, Anthropology, Music and Audio Technology, Art History. The School of cultures and languages also faces shut down.
A petition has been raised, but the writing is on the wall.
Among other ironies, Kent describes itself as ‘the university of ambition’ and its chancellor is a former BBC journalist, Gavin Esler.
Following the termination of music studies at Oxford Brookes, this leaves music academics everywhere in fear of the sack.
“Ambition” is not enough to pay the bills. It is evident that these places have not enough students to keep the departament running.
That is the sad truth of it. UK Universities have some subjects that not enough people find useful. Its sad for the academics who see it as their life’s work. But in the end you can’t educate if few people want to study that subject.
The decimation of instrumental teaching services countrywide, along with the desperate fall in A-level Music take up (and the two are closely related), thanks to Thatcher and also Mr Bliar will ensure that this trend continues… Tragically.
The reason that less and less students find some interest in the humanities is not just that they find it less useful, but because in the modern world, there is less and less need for the humanities in general. Why? Because the modern world is becoming less and less humane. That is the message young people get from the world, so they try to find something that offers them the opportunity to survive in that world.
My exact thoughts. It’s really sad news for people losing their jobs .
More broadly though, I hope it doesn’t
sound too glib but let them have their inhumane, transitory world. People will always need music, art, literature and these philistines will always be blind.
Well said.
an interesting observation . However , this is surely hard to measure . Can we be so certain that the world is less humane now than it was say 50 years ago ? We’re much more aware of what’s going on , more distracted arguably.
It has become less humane in a different way: technology taking-over all kinds of tasks which had been the normal activities that connected people to the world and to each other – like shopping without human interaction, meetings on screens, public transport with automatic payment, etc. etc. All of this feeds into alienation and dehumanization, and people withdrawing into their internet fantasy bubble. From that place, physical destruction and violence looses inhibitions because it has become ‘less real’. In the mind of quite some people, reality has turned into some sort of screen game.
Esler should do the decent thing and resign in protest. Plus, it’s all very well saying these departments don’t have enough students to keep the departments running, but the Unis need to be doing more to encourage kids into those subjects – targeting the schools to do more in music, in particular, and heaven knows we need more people qualified in Health & Social Care. Plus, as I’ve said elsewhere, “Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone”, and (to misquote Jane Austen’s Mr Darcy) “Once lost it’s lost forever”. Once the Music Dept has gone, it’ll be a gradual decline of the culture of the Uni, and the orchestra, choirs, band, concerts will go too. Bean counters again, who know the cost of everything and the value of nothing. I don’t know Kent but I wonder if this will affect any choral scholars at The Cathedral? Also, in the UK Research Excellence Framework (REF) exercise in 2021, Kent’s Music was in the top 10 UK Unis for research – a key component in overall Uni Rankings, and helping the Uni to rise 11 places in the REF. Ranked 4th for research in the 2024 Complete University Guide.
The ‘beancounters’ you disdain so much are people responsible for spending public money and why should they throw it recklessly where demand has radically fallen? Just because you say society ‘needs’ it? Well, welcome to reality.
What “reality”?..The one that makes the world smaller so it can be summed up by pre judged, so called “worldly” phrases such as “get real” .
This, when you really look at it, doesn’t mean anything.
Of course, It’s the wider issue that’s at stake involving , amongst other things the effect of these losses on the nation’s mental health.
Maybe these questions around lack of meaning, beyond
the slogans of the “welcome to reality” brigade was what Hamlet meant when he said. ” There are more things between heaven and earth than our dreamt of in your philosophy”
And if you think this is all wooly headed thinking, seriously ask yourself this….How did we end up with Boris Johnson and then Liz Truss as PM.? You’ll find the answers in the music and the other ‘humaniries’ that
fewer and fewer people will be exposed to.
It’s just a reflection of the way in which British Society is moving. I feel for my own children growing up here and I hope they look beyond the horizon of British shores….
Don’t look to the U.S.
This is sadly unsurprising, as the music field as a whole has for decades blissfuly ignored a crisis in demand for its product. Ultimately a factory has to shut its doors if the customers dry up. We could go a dozen years without any music graduates at all and still have no shortage of qualified artists to fill the diminishing number of viable stage opportunities around the world.
Steve, we can probably add college and university teaching jobs to your remarks, but you described the situation very well.
During the time I worked on my degree in music education in the 1970s, it seemed as if there were plenty of jobs for music graduates. Talented performance majors with master’s degrees and PhDs (or DMAs) were generally able to find college teaching positions if orchestra jobs weren’t available. It also appeared that there were plenty of teaching positions for those with advanced degrees in theory/ composition and musicology.
From everything I’ve seen, those days are gone. I personally know (or know of) several talented holders of advanced music degrees who are under-employed or who have chosen another career.
If we feed a thing, it will grow .
If we starve it, it will die. And then, when it dies, we can say.
” Look!! Nobody wanted it!”
We might even congratulate ourselves on how clever and rational we were.
This is summing-up the problem exactly.
It is a problem of the Western world, a psychic problem, and a result of a world view in which materialism, quasi-efficiency, market think (uncontrolled capitalism) and populism get a place in society which they don’t deserve at all because they are damaging influences. It’s against nature and against human nature, and against general well-being. In spite of its wealth, in the West psychic problems are staggering – addictions, depression, anxiety disorders, violence, frustration etc. etc. are rampant.
Not surprising as so few schools offer music GCSE and A-levels. Learning an instrument is so expensive, only the wealthy can do it
…because funding has been cut by governments. Many counties had free or highly-subsidised lessons on real instruments taught by real teachers in the ’70s and ’80s.
Have schools stopped offering music GCSE because of a lack of applicants or because they wanted to make cuts?
A combination of “ebacc” effectively telling students and parents that music and arts are not rigorous/academic (bull****), lack of music teachers being trained and funding cuts to schools to invest in equipment and provision for subsidised lessons. Shameful
That is not exactly true. Give up the new car every 2 years. Forget the country club. Cook your meals instead of eating out & that alone pays for an awful lot of music lessons. That’s what I did for my daughter. Car was 20 years old before it was replaced. Never ate out & could afford steak at ho9⁹me. Forwent the holidays. All this done on one salary -that salary of a very well qualified music teacher. Get over yourself. IF YOU HAVE A CHILD, EVERYTHING IS FOR THEM FOR THE FIRST 18 OR 21 years of their life. When they leave, you get your life back. If you can’t do without for uuyr children, then do the whole world a favour & don’t have any.
What the use of Kent Uni music department is, I can’t figure out. London (not that far away) has the Royal Academy (my Alma mater), Royal College, Trinity College & Guildhall. How any musicians can the world shelter?
Gavin Esler, who dates a violinist? Doesn’t University of Kent also award the Guildhall School of Music and Drama degrees?
I think the Privy Council granted Guildhall its own taught degree awarding powers in 2014, and Doctorates are validated by City, University of London.
He is married to a violinist, and is his second wife.
Please elucidate, Maria.
Doesn’t this call the whole point of studying music at university into play? When filling out my UCCA form many, many moons ago, I was at a loss as to whether to apply to universities or music colleges, not really knowing what I wanted to do and wondering if I had the requisite level for either. One university offered a half-way house: Lancaster. They had excellent instrumental teachers (Piano: Heather Slade-Lipkin and Craig Sheppard, for example) and provided the academic and theoretical full monty for everything else.
Many of the students were in the same boat: some went on to have very distinguished careers in academia (including one who spent time in prison for selling priceless first editions, but that’s another story), some became soloists and one went on to become a household name via a car programme. I’d like to think the way I accompanied his flute playing had an influence, but then, probably not.
There were innumerable ensembles to join, plus a university orchestra. The concert series regularly featured the BBC Northern Phil (as it was then known), Janet Baker did a recital with Geoffrey Parsons, the London Mozart Players came up every year. I could go on. Oh, and yes, we even had our own professional resident string quartet which also gave tuition to the string players (all the girls fancied the cellist).
Lancaster University closed its Music Department a few years ago. Lack of students, apparently. The premises are now used by the Physics Department. Lovely.
The point is that it’s not just purely academic music departments which are being given the old heave-ho. Even somewhere as useful as Lancaster had to throw in the towel. Where is this leading?
Sorry, correction: the BBC Northern Symphony Orchestra, later know as the BBC Phil.
Pretty sure University of Kent has never had a music department in the traditional sense? Don’t think they’ve ever offered undergraduate music degrees.
Exeter University lost its music department 20 years ago. It provided excellent facilities and instrumental training for not only aspiring graduates but also undergrads in other subjects who had musical backgrounds from schooldays. The vice chancellor at the time also closed the engineering dept.
Gavin Esler, the Chancellor, presented the flagship Newsnight programme on BBC2 for quite some time.
British music making is a shadow of I ts former self and seems to be collapsing on so many levels, despite being seen as leaders by many in the world.
Some depressingly stupid responses here. It’s not just about ‘numbers of students’. It’s about decisions that central government has made since 2010 to make universities obey a ‘market’ where the income they can receive is frozen. And where because Tony Blair decided 50% of people should go to university , such a market was inevitable.
Higher education is one thing currently that Britain does really well, while our growth rate lags in the G7. Instead of all this short sightedness we should be promoting it around the world. This isn’t just a lament for ‘nice subjects’. It makes hard economic sense.
Yet they will still want music at every public event, ceremony and celebration……
No, they’ll use ‘canned’.
The idea in this thread that courses will inevitably be scrapped because not enough students take them or ‘find them useful’ points at the very heart of what is the disgraceful marketisation of the UK’s education system, which has in all its forms been an utter disaster. No-one ever argues that, because, say, BA (Hons) Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic at Cambridge is not useful or popular, it should be scrapped. This is because Cambridge is much richer than most other universites, and will also use its income from courses that are huge in student numbers and research funding to subsidise those much smaller. Places like Kent cannot do this, presumably due to decades-long underfunding and what is likely to be some vile managerial streak running through its leadership.
The problem isn’t music: it’s neoliberalism.
The result of Brexit. There are no more EU citizens on home fees. Students from EU now study in EU where in some countries the university fees are very low. I see more departments closing in the future. This is sad.
Kent previously styled itself as ‘the European university’… Then quietly dropped that tag after brexit, and adopted the rather more Stalinist ‘we stand for ambition’ as the marketing slogan.
There’s definitely something rotten…
Over 2,500 years ago, Pythagoras considered the study of music as important as mathematics and astronomy. Our modern universities are reverting to barbarism.
No, our society has reverted to barbarism. All cultural subjects are being dropped. No different than manners!
Why on earth was/is the University of Kent employing about 9 or 10 of those 58 academic staff members in a Music department that doesn’t even offer a degree, but just a concert series (a good one) and a few orchestras, ensembles and choirs? By the way, we aren’t discussing, on this page, the City’s other University, Canterbury Christ Church University, which does actually offer a music degree.
You are looking are the wrong page Will. Kent was offering 3 degrees until this year, when they forced the department to merge them into one, before closing it down (together with other 8 disciplines): https://www.kent.ac.uk/courses/undergraduate/6511
These courses are not going to fulfill any ambitions or the monthly bills. Now, if these departments were clever then they could have customised their courses for e.g. Indian or Chinese music, dance forms and instruments. They could have collaborated with Film and Music industry in Asia. It’s hard otherwise.
The arts, literature and music have brought this country into a global ranking. Who hasn’t heard of Shakespeare, The Beatles? We should be supporting the fact that there should be a choice for students – not everyone is suited to STEM subjects. And those subjects don’t enhance the lives of those with depression, altzheimer’s or children’s imaginations. The subjects under threat at Kent all have a positive effect on Society and should be encouraged.
The naming of Shakespeare and The Beatles in one breath somehow undermines the intention of this comment.
Christchurch uni open a few years ago in the same city. Kent university has performed poorly for many years. It has had a poor corporate culture for decades. It should be closed down completely.
I graduated in music quite a few years ago and pursued a music career. But many of my music class mates took up careers in accountancy, law, finance, banking and so on. They were put through employer provided graduate conversion courses and went on to have successful careers. Yet today, I have the impression that a university degree is seen by employers and students alike not as an education, but training for future employment. With this kind of thinking it’s not surprising that students will be wary about taking A level music and continuing to a degree in the subject if they feel they can only look for music related jobs thereafter. So is it really now the case that employers no longer consider music graduates as people possessing a range of transferable skills and abilities but only fit for music related jobs?
A very sad state of affairs. What’s happening in the world? And it’s surely really odd that health and social care is not seen important either? Aging population. Not enough carers. Disabled people threatened with having to go into homes rather than live independently because of lack of help available. The NHS in trouble.
Truth journalism not AI stories so needed at the present time.
Music which accompanies everything we do or see.
Knowledge of the past, of different cultures that could possibly lead to the understanding, solving of present and future conflict.
These closures, this direction away from the arts and humanities that starts in schools these days feeds in towards the present unravelling of this country.
It’s all going so wrong. An implosion. It’s so sad.
Advice please. Daughter looking to study music (aim to teach it at primary school level). Any suggestions of a nice broad music degree. Was going to look at Kent…
stilbury08@btinternet.com