Creative Cull

Talking points

• Universities increasingly target creative programmes like Music for cuts, often viewing them as unprofitable.
• Despite perceptions, creative graduates show high employment rates and essential transferable skills.
• Cutting creative degrees narrows access for underrepresented groups and undermines education's broader purpose beyond job preparation.

“Cardiff University is considered one of the best music departments, notwithstanding Oxbridge, in the UK,” Sir Karl Jenkins, the musician, composer and Cardiff alumni told the BBC last year. Sir Jenkins is one of many notable graduates of Cardiff’s School of Music: its alumni list also includes world famous composers, the head of music departments at other universities, and even a judge on a national TV singing show.

So, when it was announced in January 2025 that the university’s music school was threatened with cuts, there was widespread outrage. A petition to save a course attracted more than 25,000 signatures, and it was referenced in an open letter to the UK Prime Minister signed by the likes of popular musicians including Ed Sheeran, Coldplay, Stormzy and Harry Styles.

The announcement may have attracted outrage from outside the university sector, but for those within the industry, it probably didn’t come as such a big surprise. Because when universities announce cuts, as they seem to be doing with increasing regularity nowadays, creative subjects like music are often first on the chopping board.

"There's a perception that programmes like these just don’t make any money,” says Joe O’Connell, a lecturer in music at Cardiff University. "There's also that classic attitude of: a music degree, what are you going to do with that?”

As it turns out, students doing creative degrees go on to do plenty of worthwhile things. Over 90 percent of O’Connell’s students move into graduate-level employment or further. Research carried out by The Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre (The Creative PEC) also found that arts and culture graduates are more likely to be using what they learned during their studies in their current work than graduates of other subjects. Graduates of several creative degrees, including music, were also more likely to agree that their work is meaningful and important to them.

"I had the best four years of my life,” says Jackie Yip, a graduate of Cardiff University’s School of Music. " I was a shell of a human being before I joined university and this school particularly, because me and my twin sister grew up in a rural seaside town with next to no diversity (Yip is of East Asian descent). So, as you can imagine, going to school was very, very tough. Music was a real outlet for me.”

For Yip, studying a creative degree gave her a range of transferable skills that have not only had a big impact on her career, but transformed her as a person. She counts communication, perseverance, resilience, confidence and teamwork among them.

“Musicians are constantly collaborating with others to do their music and do their craft. And whatever you do for a career, you have to work as a team. I certainly know who the team players are in my industry. [I can tell apart] those who have arts and creative backgrounds from those who studied in solitude for three or four years."

Yip’s story also goes some way to dispelling the myth that creative students have nowhere to go after graduating. She says her degree gave her the confidence to run as president of the student union, which she won, before moving into the fundraising office at Cardiff University. She has since been headhunted by Oxford, which receives the most donations of any UK university.

Read the full article on QS Insights Magazine 31.