The Setting of Student Fees

Now most of the university's fee levels for 2012 have been announced it seems that the majority have gone for £9,000 or quite near to this. The Government predictably seems to be horrified that universities have made a rational decision given the restrictions that have been put upon them. At present, most Arts and Humanities courses bring in around £7,200 per student, so in theory any fee below that would cause a loss for University (unless there were counter-balancing cuts). The Government has also been making cutbacks in funding to Universities in the run up to 2012, and want to restrict the numbers of overseas students (another important source of income to universities). Another factor is that there is likely to be a drop in student applications for 2012 entry (both UG and PG) which may also cause a drop in income.
    So it seems that the universities have taken the only option open to them. After all, it costs a similar amount to teach a student whether they go to Oxford or Oxford Brookes, therefore they ought to have a similar fee. If all the ex-polys charged much less than the Russell Group Universities, then they would look as if they were offering a much inferior course, and also have less money to ensure that this was not the case. It will be interesting to see how the Government responds to this rationalism.

Turnage's opera Anna Nicole and Ferneyhough at the Barbican

In recent weeks there have been some significant and intriguing contemporary music performances in London; namely Mark Anthony Turnage's new opera Anna Nicole at ENO and Brian Ferneyhough's Total Immerson at the Barbican. These events show that new music still has the potential to surprise and delight audiences, even if in the case of the Ferneyhough they are callenging works.
    Anna Nicole based on the tragic life of the notorious celebrity Anna Nicole Smith uses a text by Richard Thomas (librettist of Jerry Springer the Opera) and is driven by the narrative. The music is effective and poignant in places but it is the text and the drama that seems to be centre stage. It seems to me that this is mid-way between an opera and a musical which makes it much more approachable for most audiences. Only in the later part of the second act does the music become more prominent. At the first performance, the audience was very enthusiastic - perhaps more so than one would expect at the first performance of a new work. To be honest it was a much more engaging evening than the last new opera I heard: Alexander Goehr's Promised End in which the music was mostly turgid and the text inaudible throughout.
    Ferneyhough at the Barbican was quite a different kind of music to the Turnage, much more challenging but also more thought-provoking. The concert I heard was with the BBC Symphony Orchestra on 26th February including a UK premiere Plotzlichkeit  and also La Terre est un Homme for full orchestra. These were both very dense works with many layers of material for the listener to comprehend. It seems to me that when less was going on in the music moments of real beauty emerge - like seeing through windows in the music. We also heard Ferneyhough's early Missa Brevis which in many ways was as powerful as the other larger works in the programme, and quite astounding given it was written in 1969. Ferneyhough is certainly not everybody's cup of tea, but I think we do need composers like him to continue to challenge and amaze as well as the more crowd-pleasing Turnage.

More Destructive Government Action on Music Education

The latest ITT funding decision by Michael Gove will have a very negative effect on Music and Art Education in this country. The numbers of students who will be trained as music teachers will be cut by a third for next year and their bursary will also be removed. This is on top of the fact that music will not be in the spurious/fake English Baccalaureate being introduced by Gove. The results of both these misguided policies is that there will be a reduction in music teachers in UK schools, and also a reduction in pupils taking music. Clearly this is a policy that should be resisted unless we want our children to have purely utilitarian education. Of course in the public schools that our cabinet attended, music will still be valued and taught.

Why music notation is important for music students

One of the most controversial issues in music higher education today is the shift away from music notation amongst students in HE. This means that when students arrive at university or college we cannot assume that they can all read music, and have to to help them to learn. This wasn't the case 10 years ago so why now? The obvious answer is that you can pass and do well at BTec national diploma and A level music courses without having good music notational skills - so if you get the required grade you will get a place in HE. Once in HE students may well struggle with the notational demands. The reasons why notation is often not taught in school/college is because if takes time and patience, and you don't necessarily need it in popular music. There are also a lot of students who come to music through music technology ( not so many learn instruments because of the on-going impact of cuts to music education in the 1980s) and music notation is seen as irrelevant to these students.
    So why is it important to learn to read music? The reason is that if you don't, you are at a disadvantage compared to others who can, when you are in the workplace. For example, in film composition you are likely to need to write parts for live players at some stage (very few composers can afford to employ others to do this); in studio production you may be expected to create a string arrangement, or change one 'on the fly'. If all you want to do is play in a band, then fine you don't need to read, but if you want to analyse the detail of works and songs then it is essential that you can read. There is a problem that everyone thinks they can be a musician with next-to-no expertise or knowledge ( I sometimes see such students at interview - they seem shocked that they might need to read music to study it). This is because of the ease that you can create popular music tracks with software, pre-existing loops and samples. The reality is that it takes hard work and real expertise to be a successful musician. There are now some excellent web sources to help students learn notation and music theory such as Teoria and dolmetsch which are good places to start learning about the theory. Just as you should be able to read words to take an English degree, I think you should be able to read music to take a music degree - or at least be prepared learn how to. 

A Black Day for Higher Education

The parliamentary vote for the tripling of student fees on Thursday, and parallel savage cutting of university funding was a black day for Higher Education and for the country as a whole. It means that many prospective students (especially from poorer backgrounds) will probably not go to university because of the huge debt created (only a small number will be given scholarships). The cut to the teaching budget in the Arts and Humanities from 2012 is effectively 100%, so these areas will only be funded by student fees, and the STEM subjects will also have large cuts. This will affect academic subject departments throughout HE because if they cannot recruit students at the higher fee (because prospective students have been frightened off), they are likely to close down or be reduced in size.
    Clearly some of the right wing commentators would say that a reduction in the size of higher education would be a good thing because they think there are too many students studying given the number of graduate jobs. This is a rather facile argument as all the evidence suggests that UK plc needs more graduates in the future not fewer, therefore putting students off studying seems to be a perverse action. The Coalition's argument that HE has to take it's fair share of the required cuts (because of banker greed) doesn't make much sense given the size of the cuts mentioned above. Another oddity is that of course the loans will still cost the country about the same as the present funding scheme for many years to come (until graduates start to pay back). It is not really about cuts, it is about conservative ideology. A much fairer approach would be to raise income tax to fund what the country needs in HE, school education and NHS. This was the preferred model (until Thatcherism took hold ) in the past, and is much more 'progressive' than the scheme that has been voted in.
    So what can be done in HE about this situation? It is unlikely that HE funding will change until the next election, and even then if Labour get back in, Miliband refused to say that he will scrap the new scheme. I think that the New Universities are at the most risk because more of their students will be put off studying (see research by Leicester University   Fee research and More on this), so this is likely to be where the pressure is greatest. New Universities could ruthlessly reduce costs so that the fee can be set at the lower end of the £6000-£9000 range, but this would be likely to impact on the quality of the student experience which is crucial. The other problem is that having a lower fee will suggest that you have an inferior course (see how this impacted on Leeds Met). So it is likely that New Universities will probably set relatively high fees (to avoid degrading their courses), but will attempt to improve the quality of what is offered and increase their marketing to their poorer students. The positive aspect of all this is that there will be a renewed interest in high quality teaching, something that seems to have been lost in the rush to promote research in New Universities. Of course the main worry is that no one actually knows what new students will do in 2012, so it is very difficult to plan.