Is misinformation spreading from the students and general public?

On 7 May 2025 Lincoln College informed applicants who already had been given places that their places had been withdrawn, and they should seek alternative institutions for study. This included students who had completed a one-year foundation degree, who were unable to progress onto the first year of the B.A.(Hons) for the 2025/26 academic year. We have received no satisfactory answer as to why these students have been affected in this way.

The campaign to save the schools of Musical Instrument Crafts at Newark maintains that a cost-based course would only be available to UK residents with access to private mechanisms of funding. It would exclude UK students who require the support of student loans to pay for their course and maintenance as a student. It would prevent anyone from the EU or overseas from obtaining a student visa to study in the UK. In the past up to 60% of the student body has come from outside of the UK. To date (2 June) we have not heard of satisfactory plans by the Lincoln College Group that would satisfy our concerns. As things stand it is easy for the Lincoln College Group to celebrate the cultural significance of the school, implement rescue plans, and accept that the course had no choice but to close as admissions drop over the next two years.

Admissions figures, including the number of enquiries for places on a course where applications are currently suspended are confidential.

We maintain the campaign to save the Newark Schools of Musical Instrument Craft on this basis only.

What about fees? Is a full-cost model better?

The Lincoln College Group acknowledges that students applying for a future full-cost model would not be eligible for student finance. Therefore regardless of the fees applicable in this new model and the costs of running the course, the only people who would be eligible for the course would be UK residents with access to private finance to fund their education. We are unsure how this constitutes a workable rescue package, especially when combined with an ineligibility of student visas.

One of the misunderstandings seems to be an understanding of what a student loan provides. In addition to a loan to pay the cost of course fees, it also provides a maintenance loan of £10,544 per year, providing the basic finance to support paying for rent and living costs of being a student. For students at Newark, or anywhere in the higher education sector, the maintenance loan is just as vital to their ability to study as a way of financing their fees. So, even if Lincoln College were able to create a system with lower fees, unless a student had the private finance to support themselves through their student years, the reduced fees would have little impact on the affordability of the course.

The Newark Music Campaign recognises that there are important exceptions to this, and that an ideal workable scenario existed back in 2017, in which some students were able to enrol on a cost-based diploma course running alongside the degree. Some students come to Newark later in life, and some have already had the benefit of student finance for an undergraduate degree, in which case they are ineligible for repeat funding. At the same time, some students come from the local area, including students who have transferred from further education at Newark & Sherwood College. Offering a cost-based funding for local students living at home in Newark whose living costs are accounted for could provide a very positive basis for accessibility and affordable education in a town where musical instrument craft has been at its centre for over fifty years.

In an ideal world we would like to see a cost-based diploma course running alongside the B.A.(Hons) as a way of increasing accessibility to the course. But we do not see this as a viable alternative, but there is a catch to all of this. Although back in 2017 the diploma fees were roughly half of the fees for a degree, i.e. something like £4,000 per year, the college fees policy document shows us that the minimum fee for a higher education course in 2025 would be £8,000 per year, so unless they are going to propose a radical change to their overall policy, that is the cost that students can expect to pay for the unaccredited course. £1,250 saving is helpful but it doesn’t match the promises.

For up to date information on student loans visit the Department For Education Support for Living Costs page here.

Is a B.A.(Hons) a bad fit for the industry?

In 1970 just 8% of the population had access to university. In 1990 this was 19% and in 2019 it reached 50%. Degrees now encompass many of the high level skills that were once taught in polytechnics before they were effectively abolished in 1992. It is understandable that people who studied at Newark in the last century may feel that changes in British education mean that the course isn’t able to deliver what it did when they were students. (Rose tinted spectacles are a problem - Newark has always produced the good, the average and the indifferent. Year on year since 1971 not all alumni have remained in musical instrument crafts after graduation).

In principle a degree program allows for the required three years of intensive study required for musical instrument crafts. A shorter time frame would have its own problems.

When the degree was started in 2017 the University of Hull as the accrediting and validating body was keen to support the reputation of the school doing as little as possible to disrupt its delivery of excellence and just enough to make the course conform to the required academic standards. In a rush to accredit it in time for government legislation coming into effect, areas of classroom study that had always been a part of the course such as acoustics, history and business studies became academic modules with excessive weight placed on these in what was a massive fudge. There is no question that these put unwelcome pressure on the student experience. It is also clear that an enlightened approach to the academic standards could provide relevant craft-based delivery of academic modules. Over the last two years tutors and supporters have been looking to create a re-validated course that meets both the criteria of the trade and the criteria required for accreditation. Meanwhile, the University of Hull has become a champion of a new way of accrediting degrees through what it terms competence based education. On paper this would be an extraordinary fit for the different pathways of musical instrument crafts. However in the run up to this crisis staff of the Lincoln College Group refused to deliver documents applying for an exemption to the academic framework to the QAA department of the University of Hull (wholly an innocent party), choosing to withdraw the degree course entirely.

Correlation is not causation: In the period around 2017 numbers in the violin school exceeded 100 students placing enormous strain on teachers, and requiring students to share benches in the college, in what was clearly an unsustainable period in the history of the school. Shortly afterwards students who spent the beginning or end of their studies in the Covid lockdown were forced to work from home with limited remote tuition. Hence an observed decline in quality in the years since the degree course was implemented can be attributed to a combination of problems of which the B.A.(Hons) is far from being the most significant factor.

The B.A.(Hons) remains the most effective pathway to student finance and student visas, and therefore vital for the continued viability of the schools of musical instrument crafts.

Blog Post Title Four

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