THIS week Rishi Sunak called some third level degrees “rip-off degrees”. This wasn’t to advocate for universal access to third-level education by scrapping tuition fees, this was to attack a significant section of third-level institutions and the concept of learning itself.
The courses in the sights are those in the arts. Using a graphic of a hammer smashing a concrete block summised exactly the intent. Such resonant imagery – a graphic of burning books could have been used – reminds us of Niemoller’s prescient poem: “First they came for the arts..."
For so long now we have lived in an educational environment where learning is valued by monetary outcome rather then enrichment or, dare I say it, enlightenment. The lack of funding for students, increasing tuition fees and lifetimes of debt reinforce privilege and compound lack of access to third-level education every day. While Stormont has mitigated some of the harm, the cold winds from London will blow strongly against our next generation. The neo-liberal approach of the Right is rampant in our local third-level institutes as university research in courses such as biomedicine – seen as a money-earner – is generously funded, while arts degrees, often populated by working-class, first generation third-level attenders, are divested.
The very value of learning for learning’s sake is monetarised in a way which diminishes its essential nature and reinforces class privilege.
The Right will always attack the arts. In a not coincidental parallel, the arts are being generationally stripped of funding.
This incongruous approach occurs while we simultaneously see the expansion of film studios in Titanic in the hope of bringing media production to the North. However, if you want to learn the craft of acting on this island you need to compete for one of sixteen places in Dublin or else travel to England to acting school. When Belfast Met axed the only vocational course for acting in the North there were few objecting voices, save that working-class hero Dan Gordon. Accolades for Adrian Dunbar, Jimmy Nesbitt and our classically-trained Derry Girls ring hollow if the next generation's doors of access are closed.
We see absolutely deserved elevation of Heaney, Longley and other literary giants who studied the classics in corridors of local universities; however, the 18-year-old poets of this century are being told that these choices are of little value, and if you want to learn how to compose and creatively think in this century this government is closing those venerable corridors.
In our decade of centenaries, the experiences of the working class and women were written for the first time, as female and working-class historians uncovered and wrote of those once considered of too little value to record. The exploration of this concentrated research was probably the most interesting part of this recent seminal period. If we close the door to those critical perspectives, we close the opportunity for understanding our past, and, significantly, for informing our future.
Of course, if your family can afford to pay for the privilege none of those doors will close. Sunak’s and Johnson’s ilk will always be encouraged to quote Latin when least appropriate. Working-class actors, writers and thinkers will be the ones rendered silent and kept out. One would almost think that a billionaire-led Tory administration has a vested interest in that.
