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.
