Berlin’s government is effectively sabotaging the city’s international status as an artistic and academic hub, according to students and teachers at the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK), which is pressing ahead with cuts to its English-language arts courses as the city slashes university budgets.
The Berlin government has decided to cut €106 million ($125 million) from the budgets of its universities, including Humboldt University, the Free University, the Technical University and the UdK, one of the world’s largest specialist arts universities with around 4,000 students. This comes despite economic studies showing that international students bring a net benefit to state coffers and foster economic growth.
The UdK has been forced to cut some €8 million from its yearly budget of around €100 million, meaning whole courses will have to be dispensed with. Teachers and students are particularly upset at the loss of the Sound Studies and Sonic Arts master’s program, a three-year course taught in English since 2017 that attracts students worldwide. An open letter calling for the decision to be reversed has gathered close to 5,000 signatures, including many leading figures in Berlin’s cultural scene.
UdK lecturers Daisuke Ishida and Jan Thoben fear for the future.
The capital of cutting-edge music
One of those facing redundancy because of the cuts is Japanese sound installation artist Daisuke Ishida, who has taught the Sonic Arts course since 2012 and is devastated because the city has long been a hub for experimental and electronic music. New applicants “gravitate towards the city and the study program at the same time,” he told DW.
Berlin is home to a legendary electronic music scene and important sound art festivals such as the CTM Festival, which attracts prominent international sound artists. Ishida sees his course as “playing a very important role in that ecosystem.”
“What’s really ironic is that [Berlin modern art galleries] Neue Nationalgalerie, Hamburger Bahnhof, and HKW all have big sound art exhibitions,” Ishida said. “The decision runs absolutely counter to all this.”
“This is what’s attractive about Berlin on a global scale — its arts and culture,” said Jan Thoben, coordinator of the Sound Studies and Sonic Arts program. “We don’t have industry, but we have the creative industry, and we have the cultural players, and if this continues to be cut away, then it cuts at the heart of Berlin.”
In a statement to DW, the UdK said it had been legally obliged to review all its structures and that there had been “no alternative but to adapt the organizational form” to the legal framework laid out by the Berlin government. “The current degree programs will be completed in accordance with the law, which means that they will continue to be offered for at least twice the standard period of study, i.e., over a period of around six years,” it added.
Protesters holding up signs reading “No art without us!” at a demo last year.
The economic benefits of students
Berlin is also home to several sound technology companies, including software company Ableton. Ableton co-founder Robert Henke, a former UdK professor, told the Tagesspiegel that he thought it “economically unwise to discontinue such degree programs, especially in Berlin.”
On a larger scale, international students have been shown to bring a net economic benefit to Germany despite many universities not charging tuition fees. A study released last year by the German Economic Institute in Cologne (IW) found that the 79,000 international students in Germany in 2022 generated a long-term net benefit of €15.5 billion for public coffers.
The Berlin government did not want to comment on the study or the decision to cut the Sound Studies and Sonic Arts program, saying the latter was up to the university. The government pointed to a previous statement by Ina Czyborra, minister for Science, Health, and Care: “The necessary savings and cuts … were not easy for anyone. I am aware that many employees and students found them unreasonable — I take this perception very seriously.”
“This makes it all the more important that we now take responsibility together and combine the path of consolidation we have embarked upon with a fair, solidarity-based, and future-oriented further development of the higher education system,” the statement added.
Students left hanging
Though the UdK has previously condemned the cuts, some professors believe there has been a shift in the administration’s mindset. Thoben said the Berlin government has been pressuring the UdK to adhere more closely to a 2021 legal amendment designed to stop institutes for further education from creating more professorships. Until now, UdK leadership resisted that pressure. “Now the decision has been made that they want to be complicit with that regulation,” he told DW.
Many students feel left hanging by the sudden decision. Legally, the university is obliged to complete the education of students who have already started the course, but “the university has not been transparent about the process or how this will affect our education,” said Ruben Kotkamp, who moved from the Netherlands specifically to take the Sonic Arts course.
“Berlin is the contemporary art capital of Europe, especially in transdisciplinary work,” Kotkamp said. “And I expected Berlin, of all places, to have a real transdisciplinary approach to art-making, and we’re the only transdisciplinary program at the UdK — that makes it even more sour that they’re cutting us.”
Edited by: Rina Goldenberg
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