Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Creative thinking ‘not rated’ by state
30 November 2009
Academics claim STEM policies threaten UK’s ‘last remaining world-leading sector’. Hannah Fearn reports
Disgruntled leaders of creative universities protested about the way they are treated by the Government after a junior minister rejected repeated warnings that policies favouring science over creative subjects would lead to economic decline.
Nigel Carrington, rector of the University of the Arts London, told a conference on the academy’s contribution to the creative economy, held in the capital last week, that plans to focus scarce funds on science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) subjects failed to recognise the economic importance of the creative industries.
Sharing a panel with Siôn Simon, minister for creative industries in the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, Mr Carrington said that the UK’s creative businesses were “arguably its last remaining world-leading sector”.
In the past decade, he said, a 40 per cent increase in enrolments for creative degrees had coincided with a 26 per cent rise in the number of people working in the industry. Moreover, half of employees in the sector had an undergraduate education, meaning that higher education was an incredibly powerful force in the creative economy.
“Higher education has been, and will continue to be, pivotal to the growth of our sector,” he said.
But Mr Carrington added that the Government was “prejudiced”, believing that future prosperity depended on STEM skills. He said this bias could destroy the creative sector.
“The universities that have nurtured our creative industries are being challenged by two really dangerous factors,” he said. “The first is the risk posed by the Government ring-fencing funding for STEM, which has necessarily reduced the funding available for the rest of the sector. The second danger is that the creative industries are largely made up of thousands of small businesses.”
The framework for higher education, unveiled by Lord Mandelson earlier this month, makes it clear that businesses will be expected to make more of a contribution towards the costs of university research and teaching.
But Mr Carrington said the creative sector did not have the money to contribute in the way the Government envisaged.
“Our business partners are far more numerous but generally much smaller, with much smaller training and research budgets,” he said.
“The terrible danger for our sector is that the creative industries won’t have the capacity to support us and we will shrink.”
Mr Simon rejected claims that demand for creative skills equalled that for STEM expertise, even within the creative sector.
“One of the things that [digital and creative employers] constantly say is that they need more graduates with high-level skills in STEM subjects,” he said.
“It’s a misconception that creative industries need only conventionally creative backgrounds. They also need high-level maths, physics and computer skills.”
He also claimed that academics “underestimated the capacity of the creative industries” to contribute financially to higher education.
However, his response drew derision from delegates.
Geoffrey Crossick, warden of Goldsmiths, University of London, said that many creative sectors were crying out for graduates with artistic and creative talent.
He said: “The disciplines represented here think that the Government doesn’t rate them at all. From what we see in policy, that seems true.”
Mr Simon said he would pass on the delegates’ concerns to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills.
“I hope the message does get through, but I’m not sure BIS returns calls from the DCMS,” Professor Crossick replied.
hannah.fearn@tsleducation.com
Readers' comments
Of course, STEM isn't creative at all. I can't think of anything it has created... oh wait...
@Colin Turner, you beat me to it. Just shows that vast parts of this country has little real grasp of what STEM practitioners actually do.
@Colin Turner, quite so. But really, kids who head off for the 'creative industries' do so because they can see how little respect is actually granted to STEM by employers, government, and - universities. They can also see economic advantage in it. In fact, there are few kinds of organisation more hostile to intellectuals and intellectual achievement than British Universities.
To be quite brutal about it, K340, there are few countries that are more hostile to intellectuals and intellectual achievement that Great Britain. In fact, I would go so far as to say no country exceeds us in terms of anti-intellectualism. The U.S. had its moments in the twentieth century, but now seems to turn its 'great minds' into cult leaders. The real tragedy here is not the loss of funding for creative subjects (although that is bad news) but the instrumentalisation of science. This government of philistines perpetrates its repulsive vandalism blandly, through empty praise and mechanical rhetoric. The genuine innovation of intrinsically motivated inquiry is subverted by the incentvising of incrementalist innovation through the research councils. Slowly, the people of the U.K. grind into mediocrity as the government tries to make people do not too much badly. The solution - stay off the hamster wheel - march on Westminster - propell Mandelson into the centre of the earth - yours ever, Hog.
Is Times Higher aware that Nigel Carrington has just destroyed the School of Creative Enterprise at his own University?
Carrington is to creativity what Mosely is to gender relations. I'm sure they could both whip everyone into line if somebody paid them enough. It's all about being a bull; bullshit, bullwhip and bull-baiting. Empty people like to think they have big horns.
With this all-mouth-and-trousers being the supposed standard bearer for the creative arts the stem subjects haven't got much to worry about, have they?! An internet search shows someone summed this bloke up and his senior team a couple of weeks ago! Of course with a following wind and a few pints the more innocent THS reader might just be taken in by this chap, everyone else.. well.. splits their sides! "slow career death by multimedia is the very modern phenomenon these students have shown they’re rather good at inflicting on this university’s failing executives. Day after day through ever more juicy .doc, .jpg, .mov and .wav sized bulletins the whole world’s seen in a sort of 24/7 new media real time just what an overpaid and sorry crew of nincompoops steer the ship of fools that HMS LCC has become. But as of now how do the winds blow and the tides turn for this badly listing vessel? Let’s take its captain - holed beneath the waterline with a hull that’s flooding fast, everyone agrees it’s just about when she’s scuttled, not if. But with the number of gold doubloons it’d take to sink her so deep she’ll never bob up again, when the dirty deed’s finally done will there be enough loot in the treasure chest to press gang anyone else into salvaging the wreck that’s left? But even then, who’d take it on – not many. How about some promotions from below decks? The two number twos to act up on the bridge? Shiver me timbers long john silver not likely, here’s dumb and dumber, not even cabin boys on this ship of fools. Next comes the admiral of the fleet, what of him? Same applies, it’s when not if. but the students cartoons do him one favour, if he can just hang on to the next universitiesUK shindig there’s a fighting chance a few real vice chancellors might not confuse this laughing stock with the barman or the cloakroom ticket attendant again. Nah, this grey suited numpty’s gonna walk the gangplank, its Davy Jones Locker for this ex-corporate lightweight. Amid all this swell where’s the first sea lord of this little navy that’s gone so off course to be found? Never normally shy of a chance for wordy self promotion, guess what me hearties, this self important duffer’s been out to lunch lately. But there’s one hope yet for his exit left, a good audition for ‘I’m a celebrity get me out of here’ and he might just scuttle off to a pirates island far far away mumbling “who am I? who am I? once upon a time I was a newsreader you know”. So who’ll start the mutiny on this ship of fools idiot trio? top of the pile there’s the lords of the admiralty, ok so a governatorial bag of landlubbers for sure – a hotchpotch of the old and the bold, the bright and the dim, the innocent and the just lucky, the sharp and the blunt – this lot’ll never be in anyones first team for a tug of war up on the decks. but they do have one thing in common, a teflon coating. One or two of them are even household names outside their own households, they’ll not want customers deserting, their share prices sliding and white feathers sent to their clubs just for the sake of huffing and puffing a bit of wind into these ragged sails. It won’t be long before this lot start to “make their excuses and leave” as a News of the World reporter might say, but in the meantime listen out for the sound of sharpening cutlasses and the opening of treasure chests. The captains of the other ships in the fleet, are they the wild cards in this very unshuffled pack? Nearly but not all of them do an ok job, some of the time, but you’ll never see this bunch of timid nodding yes men pulling up many trees in the intellectual forest. as this troupe won’t be troubling headhunters for the russell group (or anyone else) any time soon, they’ll have worked out they need to be part of the UAL fleet until it’s time to go to dry dock. Nah, they won’t be sending out any lifeboats to HMS LCC. But the slightly brighter ones among these flickering lights might just have worked out it’s better to knife in the back than be knifed in the back. so who knows after all the deafening shouts of undying loyalty we’ll start to hear very soon, when darkness falls two or three of them will be signalling to the lords of the admiralty they’ll paddle up when the admiral’s safely knocked on the back of the head and man overboarded with bricks securely tied around ankles. So what next for this ship of fools? It’s gonna be messy"
Info on creative careers can be sought on www.seamlesseducationacademy.blogspot.com