A group of prominent academics from five committees representing the interests of various parts of the higher education music landscape has written an open letter to Professor Alistair Fitt, the Vice Chancellor of Oxford Brookes University, after the university announced that it is closing its music department.
In the letter, the group says that it hopes the university will revise its decision and engage in discussions “urgently and as soon as possible” in the hope that “this painful decision can be overturned and alternative plans put in place”.
The unexpected and sudden announcement by Oxford Brookes University that it plans to close its music department caused “alarm, distress and shock”, says the letter.
The decision has attracted widespread criticism of the university alongside statements of support for the music department from individuals and organisations across the music and wider creative industries. However, many staff and students are angry, upset and bewildered, with many unclear on what consultation procedures have been followed.
One particular point that a number of people, including the group who wrote the letter, have highlighted is the university’s move from its existing Wheatley campus to a new site at Headington.
In June 2022, Oxford Brookes was granted planning permission for two “cutting edge, sustainable buildings” at the Headington campus to “enhance STEM and creative industries activity”. This move to bring together ‘science, technology, engineering and mathematics’ with the creative industries was used heavily by the university during local community engagement efforts that were a critical part of its campaign to get planning permission.
It was the move to the new Headington site that allowed Oxford Brookes to sell its existing 53 acre Wheatley campus - comprising land worth an estimated £70 million - to house-builder Crest Nicolson in March this year.
Despite that, the university claims that it is primarily financial challenges that have led to its decision to close the music department.
Announcing the new Headington campus, the university said: “Bringing together STEM and creative industries activity will help to boost the experience of those studying at Oxford Brookes, providing a real advantage when our graduates embark on their next journey”.
It is this advantage presented by the bringing together of STEM subjects with creative disciplines - and the broader value of studying music - that Oxford Brookes has failed to acknowledge or understand, says the group of academics in its letter, which also asks the university for the opportunity to demonstrate the “value of music as a discipline”.
It then adds that the “complexity of musical education and graduate outcomes” can “make it difficult for those outside of music” - including the university - “to interpret its value”. It would also be “counter-intuitive to close the department and cut all staff just at the moment when a new direction is being charted”.
The study of music offers a “rich array of employability skills” say the academics, arguing that bringing together arts and humanities subjects like music with science, technology, engineering and mathematics - as Oxford Brookes argued it wanted to - is crucial for the future. A key part of this is navigating the future employment and societal challenges that may be presented by the evolution of technology, and in particular the recent rapid advances in artificial intelligence.
Quoting Andy Haldane, the former Chief Economist of the Bank Of England, the letter argues that cutting the music department at this critical point of intersection between the arts and sciences is “a big mistake for the jobs and skills of tomorrow”. The group also highlights Haldane’s statement in an interview he did with Sky News that “putting the A into STEM and making it STEMA - that’s to say arts and humanities [is] what will protect us from the rise of the machine, from the rise of AI, is our creative capacity as human beings”.
Oxford Brookes has the opportunity to embrace these challenges, say the academics, highlighting the “unusually rich variety of courses for the study of music across the UK” and demonstrating that OBU is well placed to offer something unique.
In a statement to CMU, a spokesperson for Oxford Brookes University said: “Like many institutions across the sector, the university is experiencing increasing financial challenges due to a range of external factors, such as inflation, flat student fees for UK undergraduates for over a decade, and increases in staff pay and employer pension contributions”.
The letter is signed by Dr Roddy Hawkins (Chair, MusicHE), Prof. Barbara Kelly (President, Royal Musical Association), Dr Christopher Tarrant (President, Society for Music Analysis), Prof. Byron Dueck (Chair, British Forum for Ethnomusicology), Prof Simon Zargorski-Thomas (Co-Chair, International Association for the Study of Popular Music, UK and Ireland)
You can read the full letter on the Music HE website here.