Students and faculty at the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK) say the city government’s recent budget cuts are undermining Berlin’s reputation as an international center for arts and academia. The capital’s decision to shave €106 million from university budgets has forced the UdK — one of the world’s largest specialist art schools with about 4,000 students — to trim roughly €8 million from an annual budget near €100 million, a reduction that will lead to whole programs being discontinued.
The most contentious loss is the English-language master’s in Sound Studies and Sonic Arts, a three-year program launched in 2017 that draws applicants from around the world. An open letter opposing the closure has attracted nearly 5,000 signatures, including many prominent figures from Berlin’s cultural community.
Longtime program staff fear the cuts will hollow out part of the city’s creative ecosystem. Japanese sound-installation artist Daisuke Ishida, who has taught on the Sonic Arts course since 2012 and faces redundancy, said the program channels international students into Berlin’s vibrant experimental and electronic music scene. He pointed to events like the CTM Festival and the city’s established sound-art institutions as evidence that the course plays an integral role in connecting education, practice, and the wider cultural landscape.
Jan Thoben, coordinator of the Sound Studies and Sonic Arts program, warned that shrinking the creative and cultural infrastructure strikes at the core of what makes Berlin attractive globally. “We don’t have heavy industry here,” he said; “our strength is the creative industries and cultural players, and removing them damages the city’s identity and future growth.”
UdK officials say the reductions are the result of legal and financial obligations imposed by the Berlin government and that the institution carried out a mandatory review of its structures. The university added that current degree programs will be taught through at least twice the standard study period — roughly six years — ensuring that students already enrolled can finish their courses.
Nonetheless, many students say the university has not been sufficiently transparent about how the cuts will affect their studies. Ruben Kotkamp, who relocated from the Netherlands specifically to enroll in the Sonic Arts program, said he and his classmates feel abandoned by the abrupt decision: “Berlin is Europe’s hub for contemporary, transdisciplinary art. We expected support for programs like ours — cutting the only transdisciplinary degree at the UdK is especially bitter.”
The decision has also drawn criticism from industry figures. Ableton co-founder and former UdK professor Robert Henke told the German daily Tagesspiegel that discontinuing such programs in Berlin is “economically unwise,” noting the city’s cluster of sound-technology companies and the mutual benefit between education and industry.
Advocates for international education point to wider economic evidence. A 2022 study by the German Economic Institute (IW) in Cologne found that the country’s 79,000 international students generated a long-term net benefit of €15.5 billion for public finances. Supporters of the UdK programs argue that such figures underscore the broader fiscal and cultural returns of attracting global students.
The Berlin government declined to comment directly on the study or the specific program cuts, referring instead to statements by Ina Czyborra, the city’s minister for Science, Health and Care. Czyborra acknowledged the difficulty of the required savings and said the government aims to pair consolidation with “a fair, solidarity-based, and future-oriented further development of the higher education system.” She also noted an obligation to apply legal changes intended to limit the creation of new professorships at continuing-education institutes, a regulation that UdK leadership had resisted until recently.
Faculty members say that shift in enforcement contributed to the decision to reorganize and eliminate some offerings. The move has led to protests across campus and a broader debate about whether short-term budget tightening risks long-term harm to Berlin’s cultural capital.
For now, the UdK pledges to honor existing students’ right to complete their studies, but staff reductions and program closures create uncertainty for future cohorts and for the city’s network of artists, festivals, and creative businesses that have grown up around those educational pathways. Opponents warn that shrinking international, English-language arts programs will make Berlin less competitive and less attractive to the global students and practitioners who help sustain its reputation as a leading creative metropolis.
Edited by Rina Goldenberg