STUDENTS SPEAK OUT AGAINST PROPOSED COURSE SUSPENSIONS

On Thursday 6th November, the University of Nottingham announced a plan for ‘Future Nottingham’, which entailed faculty restructuring as well as extensive course suspensions, with a view to permanent cuts. These are set to affect fifteen different subject areas, impacting 48 courses at the university in total across various areas. Disproportionately affecting the arts, these suggested ‘suspensions’ include all Modern Foreign Languages, Music and Theology. They also affect practically focused courses, with both Mental Health and Child Nursing on the chopping block, as well as Education and Social Work.

The response from the student body has been overwhelming. Many societies weighed in to emphasise the importance of the arts, including student groups focused on music, languages and journalism. Petitions have been published online to reconsider the suspensions of multiple different courses, and social media accounts with the goal to ‘save x degree’ have been mobilised. Additionally, the Student Union released a statement on Tuesday 11 November which detailed a ‘student consultation process’ that they say intends to hear student concerns and publish their collective feedback to the University Council at the end of November.

As Head of Culture for University Radio Nottingham (URN), I sought to conduct interviews with individual students and staff about the impact this will have on their learning/teaching, and their views on what is happening overall. Many expressed immense disappointment at the idea of a university without such key subjects, explaining that diversity of interest amongst the student body is extremely important to them. This has particularly been a key focus around cutting the Music degree, as students spoke of the importance that music and creativity has in their lives, and how the university seems to be devaluing a musical education. This idea of the proposals implicitly assigning value to degrees differently was one many students raised, with questions being asked over the university’s decision to propose suspensions of two-thirds its nursing courses – Child and Mental Health Nursing specifically. At a time when the UK is in dire need of more nurses, teachers and social workers, moving to suspend intake for these courses along with Education and Social work seems short-sighted and the opposite of what is needed on a wider scale. Moreover, it has been pointed out that the university is in a fortunate position of being positioned next to a teaching hospital, Queen’s Medical Centre, and so to minimise nursing courses appears even more of a questionable decision. Concerns were also raised specifically around Nottingham’s supposed identity as a Global University, with campuses in China and Malaysia, and how the proposed lack of language education will inevitably affect this.

I also conducted radio interviews live on air with URN, including one with Her Campus’ own social secretary Kiara, a second year History and Politics student. She spoke of how universities have become run increasingly like businesses, rather than being focused on education and how this ultimately decentres their students. She also highlighted how at Her Campus many people write on the arts and music, and these proposals will have a negative impact on people with these interests attending the university. As Her Campus is of course a publication focusing on women’s voices, we discussed how many of these courses in the arts as well as nursing and teaching are traditionally female-heavy courses, and therefore these proposals may indirectly cause less women to attend the University of Nottingham.

As a part of these series of interviews, I spoke to Evie Thomas, who goes by Bebe on TikTok, a third year International Media and Communications student with 68.9k TikTok followers. She has recently made videos speaking up strongly against the proposed suspensions, which have a combined total of over 200k views at the time of writing. When interviewed, she was emphatic that although her own course is not being affected, what she has studied for two and a half years has focused on communication and culture and how we ‘connect with one another around the world’, with Music and Modern Languages ‘sitting at heart of creativity and understanding’. As a result, she spoke of her feelings of betrayal that the university is minimising interdisciplinary links through impacting these key subject areas. One key point of our discussion was her personal experience of studying Spanish in her degree, and she highlighted the way that it enhanced not just her technical skills but her cultural understanding. Overall, she emphasised the importance of speaking up and using her platform, saying that it would undermine her morals to have promoted the University of Nottingham and based her content around her time here, and not to speak out now about the proposed suspensions. She stressed the importance of students using their voice through emailing, signing petitions and protesting for what is ultimately the future of education.

On the whole, students are concerned about what lies ahead for the university. Current students and staff are experiencing uncertainty, fearing for which courses may be affected in years ahead. And it is incredibly worrying that what should be a solid reputation of a leading Russell Group university is very likely to be somewhat diminished in the coming months and years by both the suspensions themselves and the impact on the teaching at the university as a result.