News location:

Canberra Today 15°/19° | Thursday, March 28, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

Opinion: Say goodbye to SoM’s teaching elite

OPINION / Lucian McGuiness

STUDENTS, staff, alumni and community stakeholders have reacted with fury and indignation to the proposed changes to the ANU School of Music curriculum, initially flagged rather clumsily by the ANU on May with an internal memo that informed academic staff that the future of the School probably wouldn’t include them.

I’m sure the bean counters at the ANU would have expected this reaction, but I’m equally sure they don’t fully understand it.

A higher education degree in music is rarely motivated primarily by consideration to “graduate destinations”. The fact is students of music simply aren’t interested in the pragmatic elements of a tertiary music education, and the reason is simple: the attractiveness of a reputable conservatorium of music lies in the quality and the nature of the staff and the student body. Their career prospects are murky, at best, and where measurable competency standards are concerned, music is an autodidactic pursuit to large degree anyway.

The more elusive essences music students wish to acquire are less tangible, and based in personal and communal experiences, which is why all successful students of music have mentors and peers to thank.

In the May 4 press conference announcing the changes publicly, deputy vice-chancellor (academic) Prof Marnie Hughes-Warrington and head of the ANU School of Music Prof Adrian Walter seemed weary and frustrated by the inevitable opposition to their plan.

Those with connections to music education will empathise with student reactions (and perhaps remember the 2010 Victorian College of the Arts debate), but to outsiders it may seem a disproportionate, unreasonable response or simply an unrealistic position given the economics of the tertiary education system.

The ANU reports that the School of Music is currently running an annual deficit in the region of $2.7m for an undergraduate student body totalling less than 300. The 2011 Higher Education Base Funding Review also identifies music as a discipline inherently underfunded in the current system. The ANU School of Music has a relatively low annual intake, meaning there are few opportunities to benefit from economies of scale, something private institutions like the Australian Institute of Music rely upon to help balance the books. From an administrator’s point of view, the proposed curriculum change, which shifts focus far away from the traditional studio-based music performance degree, makes perfect sense.

It’s not difficult to see that studio-based learning, especially in music conservatoriums where the student to staff ratio is very low, is inherently expensive. To trim the budget, one-on-one tuition will cease to be a standard element, students will receive credit for work experience with community partners, and some content will be delivered digitally in a special video-conferencing arrangement with the Manhattan School of Music in New York.

Reflecting the patchwork nature of a modern Australian musician’s career, they’ve proposed complementary areas of focus tailored to the surveyed “graduate destinations”, including arts-policy, business, management, pedagogy and other pathways that those trained in music often find work in. Prof Walters has said that a new generation of students who recognise the true “portfolio” nature of a modern musician’s career will be excited and enthused by the newly invigorated range of options on offer within the bachelor of music program.

But for performance-oriented students, the promise of mentorships with a respected teachers, and bonding with other elite students, is the principle drawcard to a tertiary music institution. They know the career opportunities for performers are slim, and in any case, in the world of performance a BMus or any tertiary award is completely irrelevant.

However, a respected conservatorium with renowned performance teachers and a reputation for elite students offers a bounty of opportunity only the wealthiest and best connected of wannabes could hope to assemble around themselves otherwise. Previously, Prof Walters seemed to concur, recognising the importance of the School staff reputation in a 2008 press release announcing his appointment;

 “It will be important to draw on the significant strengths and reputation of ANU staff and to identify niche areas of activity to further enhance the School’s reputation and effectively position it for the future.”

In contrast, in the May 4 press conference he downplayed the role of teaching staff, declaring that, “the way you build a reputation is not through specific people”.

However, Prof Walter’s position on the staffing changes may be more complicated than they appear as he was reported to have taken leave this week despite VC Hughes-Warrington affirming the University’s desire that he remain and oversee the implementation of the new curriculum including the staff restructuring.

Walter refers to “about 23” full-time academic staff who will be asked to re-apply and compete for just 13 future positions. In reality, academic teaching at the School is spread between almost 50 sessional, part-time and full-time staff. These are highly respected instrumental performers, composers and teachers who, for the most part, are attracted to an otherwise small rural city by the reputation of the institution and the promise of steady income. However, under the changes, across the board one-to-one instrumental tuition will be replaced with a cash “professional development allowance” equal to roughly half the value of the current tuition scheme, to be spent at the student’s’ discretion on any approved development activity, be it tuition or other services.

How many of this teaching elite will remain in striking distance of the School hoping for the favour of students who desire instrumental tuition over, for the sake of argument, marketing advice, is anyone’s guess. You have to assume the excellence pool will be depleted somewhat, leaving an institution rich in fashionable curriculum but potentially poor in what music students value the most: close and frequent contact with teachers they respect.

Lucian McGuiness is a musician who received a BMus majoring in performance from the ANU School of Music in 2002. He currently juggles a portfolio career that includes, but is not limited to, performances in Australia and internationally, composition, grant-writing, book-keeping, website maintenance, not-for-profit corporation management, musical direction, conducting, teaching, writing and motorcycle maintenance.

Who can be trusted?

In a world of spin and confusion, there’s never been a more important time to support independent journalism in Canberra.

If you trust our work online and want to enforce the power of independent voices, I invite you to make a small contribution.

Every dollar of support is invested back into our journalism to help keep citynews.com.au strong and free.

Become a supporter

Thank you,

Ian Meikle, editor

Share this

8 Responses to Opinion: Say goodbye to SoM’s teaching elite

Pete says: 14 May 2012 at 5:25 pm

I see nothing wrong with prepare student for the real job pospect. University should preapare student for a real world not a dream world.

Reply
Claire says: 15 May 2012 at 10:12 pm

Pete,

As a current school of music, I can most definitively say we are thoroughly prepared for the real world. Quite apart from performance, composition, improvisation and numerous other skills we need to ‘make it’ as performing musicians, there are specific courses on conducting, instrumental tuition (as in how to teach one-on-one, the very practice being cut from our courses), musicology and plenty more. Besides which, students can and do take electives from other colleges within the uni, whether sciences, marketing, business, art or law.

University, quite apart from not being designed as a process, used to be about education. Our education happens to be practical in a number of areas. I’m very sorry for you, that you can’t see that.

Reply
Pete says: 16 May 2012 at 10:55 am

Claire,

Music industry are more than just performance. The change in curriculum did not limited student from continuing their performance path but it is also open up for more student who may not be otherwise be able to entered into the SoM as their are not so call elite performer but may be excellence in other area such as music history. why should the university pay for in some cases 10 times the cost of one-on-one session (due to maintaining full-time staff for few days or hours a week) where it is possible to get a credited tutor from the industry out there. The change is not just open up music education to wider community it also may help boost the private sector in music teaching in Canberra.
I think the most unfortunate thing here is the lost of jobs. And that is what make those people so angry and unfortunately prepare to misinform the public to rally beside them. Those are the people you should feel sorry for.

P.S. Sorry English is not my first language but I hope it is still readable.

Reply
susan says: 17 May 2012 at 4:49 pm

Pete, there are courses all over the place that cater for people who do not want to focus on performance. The whole point of the Canberra School of Music is to be like the Australian Institute of Sport, a place where the elite go to be mentored and to become the best in the world. Those wishing to study music teaching, sound engineering, etc. etc, have other institutions and courses to go to already. I’m sorry, but if you are not a student of music studying a performance degree or have been elite in your field, you will not, nor ever understand the mindset here. Thank you for your comments, but until you have first hand experience, perhaps you should limit your comments to things you completely understand.

I graduated from the School of Music 18 years ago and have been very happily employed in the industry ever since. My course was not “dumbed down,” and yet I have not only been gainfully employed, but every colleague of mine has been too, both here and overseas.

There is more to the Bachelor degree than just playing music all day. As Claire said, there is history, musicology, conducting, composition, business management, theory, choir, elements of law, time management and organisational skills, as well as the intangible things that we learn from being in close contact with the lecturers, fellow students and visiting guest artists. (You mentioned music history specifically – our essays were a minimum of 10,000 words so clearly not just a trifle. We all studied music history because without knowing where we’ve come from we can’t progress into the future. Those wishing to study it as their primary focus did a musicology degree, still offered at the uni.)

My typical day at uni consisted of history, theory and other lectures, chamber group rehearsal, (approx 2 hours), choir rehearsal, (approx 2 hours), orchestral rehearsal, (approx 2 hours) teaching music myself, (approx 3 hours) and I still managed to fit in 3-4 hours of individual practise in on my instrument as well as writing essays, doing theory homework and doing the day to day shopping, cleaning, etc.. I didn’t just sit around dreamily, playing my instrument, wearing flowing clothes and dreaming that one day I’d be discovered. It was hard work and a lot of it.

And as for saying that tutors are available in the community, would you expect there to be world class physicians or law lecturers just floating about in Canberra, waiting, hoping to have a student knock on their door and ask for tutoring? In the same way, our world class lecturers will not stay in Canberra but head overseas where they are respected and cherished, and Australia will lose more of its elite with its puerile mindset and ever-increasingly low standard of education. Those private teachers currently in our community do a fantastic job but are not of the standard that the lecturers at the School of Music are and cannot provide the same standard of tuition that has always been provided.

As Claire said, university is about education, not justifying one’s existence as a musician to you or anyone else who does not understand. I’m sure that if you were facing cuts to your degree or job for specious reasons, you would feel the same. It’s easy to pick on musicians because anyone can play an instrument but not everyone can become an elite musician, but let’s think of this way – elite sports people are paid an insanely and disproportionately high income for running around on a field or swimming up and down a pool. Their existence doesn’t have to be justified, but is, instead, glorified. Why is it that government funding is lavished on these people, but music and art is considered dispensable?

I think the approximately 20,000 signatures on the current Save the School of Music petition is testimony to the fact that our community is in whole-hearted support of this institution and that people should stop looking at music as the fall guy but as a vital, thriving and exciting part of our lives.

Thanks for your time.

Reply

Leave a Reply

Related Posts

Follow us on Instagram @canberracitynews