Queensland University of Technology (QUT) has put the future of its creative arts programs at risk. The university paused the 2025 undergraduate dance intake to conduct a review, which quickly expanded to include all performing arts courses. The review’s terms of reference note that performing arts degrees are “experiencing fluctuating student demand, attrition and research performance ... amid increased competition and national decline in interest in these study areas”. 
Meanwhile, performing arts students received an email framing the review as a way to “support our commitment to continually improving our courses and to meet student expectations and aspirations”. The reason for the review is likely to justify attacks on QUT students’ right to study specialised degrees.
QUT has been on the attack against performing arts courses and staff conditions since 2021, when it cut the dance performance degree and merged three faculties. QUT sacked up to 1,500 staff during the pandemic due to expected lost profits. In reality, QUT’s annual report recorded a $139.9 million operating surplus in 2021, $17.85 million of which came from reduced “employee-related expenses”. In other words, QUT saved millions through staff cuts and wage freezes.
QUT is the only public university in Queensland to offer specialised degrees in subjects like dance and technical production, which was cut to a minor this year. Cutting the dance degree would mean students in Queensland would be forced to travel interstate or pay for training at expensive private studios.
Staff at QUT are also under threat. After years of transitioning towards prerecorded lectures, bigger class sizes, and with staff squeezed by just ten minutes of paid marking time, QUT has turned its sights on the performing arts staff, too. 
The teachers and the staff who maintain the state-of-the-art facilities are now at risk of redundancies. Dance students are taught at a $60 million facility at the Kelvin Grove campus, which boasts specialised dance studios, black box drama theatres, concert halls and recording studios. Margaret Sheil, QUT’s vice-chancellor, seems willing to throw all of this away to prioritise profit-making. 
University managers are looking at other cost-cutting measures. The QUT Art Museum has had all planned 2025 exhibitions cancelled. There is no better explanation for this than the one provided by Sheil herself at a staff forum last year: “It’s looking at some of the nice-to-do things that had more benefits for the community than QUT”. 
This is the problem with university education being run for profit. For QUT managers, creative arts are “nice-to-do” and good for society but are not big moneymakers. Compare the treatment of the arts to the brand new $7.8 million Space Technology Precinct. There is cash to burn when the university can guarantee large research grants and outside funding.
The cuts are not isolated to QUT; cost-cutting is on the agenda across Australia. The threat posed to performing arts degrees is the canary in the coal mine. They set a precedent for future cuts in other faculties.
Students facing course cuts at any university have a responsibility to stand up. We should not only study whatever we want, regardless of how profitable, but also defend the rights of the staff that facilitate it. 
University education should be free, publicly owned and funded, and run for the benefit of students and society, not for vice-chancellors and administrations to make millions of dollars.

Erin Milne

Queensland University of Technology takes aim at performing arts degrees

Queensland University of Technology students have voted overwhelmingly to demand that the university divest from arms companies and Israel.
More than 600 students attended the student guild’s 15 August special general meeting for Palestine, held at the Gardens Point campus.
QUT brags that its Centre for Robotics collaborates with the US Air Force, Boeing, Thales and Rheinmetall. The latter companies are complicit in the ongoing genocide in Gaza, and profit from it.
The SGM was visibly pro-Palestine: several Palestinian flags were draped on railings, and only two students spoke against cutting ties with weapons companies. Their arguments included, “Don’t you know companies like Boeing do good research, too?”, “Sometimes the US Air Force provides aid in natural disasters” and “All companies do terrible things. Nestlé still uses a lot of slave labour”.
There wasn’t much sympathy for these arguments. Hundreds of students who have been boycotting, protesting, and donating to Palestine over the last year chanted “Free Palestine!” in response. 
The motion to cut ties with weapons companies passed with 576 for and 70 against. About 200 students subsequently marched to the Chancellery to deliver the message to millionaire Vice-Chancellor Margaret Sheil. 
While proceedings went smoothly on 15 August, the lead-up to the meeting was anything but. QUT is one of, if not the most, undemocratic university campuses in the country. The QUT Guild is ruled by a board of directors, which gives bureaucrats whose interests align with the university significant power to veto decisions made by elected student representatives. 
Students and guild-affiliated clubs are banned from putting up posters around the campus. There are severe restrictions on setting up stalls, handing out leaflets and engaging with students on campus. 
Harassment increased significantly once Students for Palestine activists collected the required number of signatures to call the meeting. The university hounded students for promoting the meeting, who were told that their leaflets and posters had been banned as “political propaganda”.
On one occasion, students wearing guild t-shirts handing out leaflets for the SGM were told to leave campus by a security supervisor. The volunteers explained that the guild was constitutionally required to inform students about the meeting. 
In response, the supervisor said, “Campus is supposed to be apolitical”. The volunteers replied that this violated their right to freedom of speech. The supervisor said that if the volunteers didn’t move, he would call the police and tell them that the students were trespassing.
The university has twice emailed staff, informing them that students were banned from making lecture announcements. The second email was sent days before our mass meeting and accused student activists of being outside agitators. 
In a meeting to arrange the SGM, a university administrator warned Students for Palestine members that the university would take chants like “QUT supports genocide” very seriously—implying that the university would consider disciplinary action against students.
University managers even called the police onto the campus twice. The first time was for a careers event that Rheinmetall had been invited to, and the second was for the SGM itself. Guild bureaucrats and university administrators threatened that once the main room and the single overflow room were full, police would remove everyone else from the campus.
QUT calls itself “the university for the real world”. It’s a fitting tagline. As in the real world, anti-genocide campaigners are hounded by the establishment. But we didn’t give in. We defied the authorities—and won.

Queensland University of Technology takes aim at performing arts degrees

QUT students defy university to vote for Palestine

Other Media

Shop

Manage Your Subscription

Contact Us