The Conservative Shadow Education Secretary Laura Trott recently sent arts educationalists and Labour politicians into a fit of the vapours by announcing that, under the next Tory government — a fanciful notion, I grant — there would be a mass cull of creative arts university courses.
These do not, Trott argues, deliver for students. Too many graduates fail to find work in their chosen fields and are left servicing sizeable loans for the privilege. This, in the reliable choreography of these things, caused Labour to clutch its pearls. Lisa Nandy took to social media in high umbrage, insisting that “Britain leads the world in film, TV, music and the arts” and that “the idea that only some of us can be part of that is disgraceful.” Bridget Phillipson followed with the fascinatingly incoherent assurance that she was not “in the business of pulling up the drawbridge” on ambitious young people “going on to study on poor-quality courses.”
The self-congratulatory rhetoric suggests access. The outcomes suggest something else
Whether “poor quality courses” are indeed a drawbridge worth lowering is the question. The notion that such courses represent the last, best hope of the unwashed aspiring to an arts career is one we encounter frequently in Arts and Creative Industries Higher Education. Ex-BBC staffers — old boys all, of minor public schools, treading water while waiting for Auntie’s pension to kick in — declaim that an academic post is an opportunity to “give something back.” Ethnically diverse youth from “widening participation” backgrounds receive the benefit of their experience, a philanthropy supplemented by a substantial university salary, another generous pension pot, and regular freebie flights to international conferences. The self-congratulatory rhetoric suggests access. The outcomes suggest something else.
The past five years have seen report after report explaining that, for all the hopes of the gates being gloriously opened by university arts courses, working-class participation in the arts has plummeted. A 2022 study showed that there has been no structural improvement in working-class access to the arts, despite the existence of a plethora of courses that aimed to place “less advantaged” students precisely there. Entrants from working-class origins have more than halved since the 1970s. Worse for those arguing for the HE drawbridge, education does not erase class advantage — even among graduates, those from professional/managerial backgrounds are more than twice as likely to enter creative work as graduates from working-class origins.
A 2024 report shows that 18 per cent of the arts, culture and heritage workforce are from working-class backgrounds, whereas around 33 per cent of the overall UK workforce are from working-class origins. The RISE report Class Ceiling, looking at arts careers in Greater Manchester, demonstrates that even when working-class individuals enter the arts, they face lower pay and slower progression. The link between creative arts university courses and greater access to arts careers begins to look like the worst designed drawbridge imaginable.
Subsequent to the creation of the post-92 universities and the Blairite commitment to push 50 per cent of school-leavers into higher education, creative arts degrees proliferated like blisters in herpes. Many were initially delivered on the cheap as “Studies” courses — Theatre Studies, Dance Studies — where practice was frequently swamped by theoretical wittering. When subsidised fees gave way to larger student loans, applicants became more transactional and demanded something sturdier for their money. Universities responded by investing heavily in facilities and recruiting practitioners (I was one) to teach the mechanics of the craft. During Britain’s membership of the European Union, this could even be lucrative: continental students, able to access loan support, flocked to British institutions, drawn by the country’s reputation and the gravitational pull of an established creative industries sector. Brexit burst that bubble. In some institutions applications fell by more than half. What had once been sustainable — albeit often slyly cross-subsidised by cheaper-to-deliver Business or Computing degrees — became, overnight, a financial liability.
More troubling is the brute fact that many graduates never access the industries they borrowed heavily to enter. Creative arts and design degrees, despite their popularity with young people hungry for a vibrant career, deliver the lowest financial returns of any subject area. Only around 27 per cent of creative graduates are in jobs directly related to arts, design or media fifteen months after graduation; the rest are dispersed across retail, administration, marketing and teaching. I have occasionally raised these figures with former academic colleagues. The response is predictable: anecdotes about the gifted few who broke through, accompanied by a scolding reproach that income is not the measure of a life. Perhaps not. But if eight out of thirty secure industry roles while the rest service substantial loans in unrelated work, it is reasonable to ask whether the arrangement is equitable (or if they would have chosen such degrees if they had known those odds). As for the notion that income does not matter, this tends to evaporate the moment a promotion round begins.
The creative industries are notorious for informal recruitment. Internships circulate through private networks and entry-level roles cluster in London and the South. The children of actors glide into the profession, the offspring of producers surface as interns at production companies, and the sons and daughters of journalists appear mysteriously well placed by the age of twenty-three. For a sector that prides itself on its moral fervour about social justice, there is remarkably little appetite for challenging these inherited pathways.
In theory, conservatoires offer the most direct gateway into many creative professions. If talented working-class young people are to enter the arts, it would be better for them to progress through these highly selective training institutions rather than through arts degrees of the university sector. In practice, however, conservatoires frequently reproduce the industry’s patterns of advantage. Admission and career pipelines are shaped by existing connections, private lessons, audition coaching and youth theatre networks — advantages far easier to accumulate in affluent families than elsewhere.
University arts courses have manifestly failed to provide the drawbridge Labour ministers imagine
Lisa Nandy’s declaration on X that the “idea that only some of us can be part of that is disgraceful” is odd. Any elite profession is, by definition, the preserve of a limited number of gifted people. (We might all have a novel in us, for example, but that does not always mean that it should come out.) The real challenge is not to pretend otherwise, but to ensure that talent can thrive wherever it is found.
University arts courses have manifestly failed to provide the drawbridge Labour ministers imagine. What they have done, instead, is saddle hundreds of thousands of young people with substantial debt while leaving the structure of access to the arts almost entirely untouched. Some young people will always have to discover, sooner or later, that the industry is not for them. Those with genuine ability deserved clearer and more honest routes of entry. Instead, they are sold the comforting fiction that a degree can unlock the gates. Those of us who promote and deliver these courses — myself included — ought to ask some very serious questions about the ethics of what we are selling.
