Many of Scotland’s best-known folk music stars have joined protests by Gaelic scholars, lecturers and politicians over plans by the University of Aberdeen to axe its languages courses.
Award-winning Gaelic and Doric singers such as Iona Fyfe, Mary Ann Kennedy and Julie Fowlis have described the university’s proposals as “a staggering act of cultural vandalism”, with protests now escalating among students and teaching staff.
Aberdeen’s Gaelic teaching dates back to its founding in 1495, and critics of the planned closure said the university had since played a vital role in supporting Gaelic tuition, arts and literature, attracting students from Japan, the US, Germany and Canada.
Echoing protests from Gaelic scholars, the Royal Celtic Society, a cultural society whose patron is Princess Anne, said axing Gaelic degrees would have “grave consequences” for Aberdeen’s reputation and could leave the university in breach of its statutory duties.
It could exacerbate a Scotland-wide crisis in Gaelic and modern languages teaching in schools, and damage prospects for students in the Highlands and islands at a time when Gaelic is in crisis, the society added.
“The society is at a loss to understand how this situation has come to pass,” it said.
Fyfe, a Doric singer and former Scottish traditional musician of the year brought up near Aberdeen, told the university the closures would have a “devastating impact” on the north-east of Scotland. “Language is culture; it is our way of understanding different customs, traditions and cultures. We are all culturally richer for these degree courses,” she said.
Aberdeen, one of Scotland’s four “ancient” universities, is in the grip of a financial crisis after it failed to arrest a fall in student numbers, particularly from overseas, alongside the effects of rising costs and the burden of servicing its borrowing.
In an effort to cut an overall deficit it has proposed deep cuts to its school of language, literature, music and visual culture (LLMVC), axing degree courses in Gaelic, Spanish, German and French. Instead, modern languages teaching will be elective or offered in joint degrees with other departments.
The university argues that a recent slump in students studying languages – falling to 27 this year from 62 in 2021 – and the costs of a large teaching staff have made the department “unsustainable in its present form”. The department will be in deficit this academic year by £1.64m.
The staff affected accuse managers of using misleading data on enrolments, student-staff ratios and the department’s research successes. Student recruitment has fallen by 450 across the university, which raises significant questions about its leadership overall, they argue.
The cuts to modern languages also prompted protests from the French, German, Spanish and Italian consulates in Scotland. In a joint letter last month, the diplomats said: “In a time of widespread budgetary constraints, we believe it is important to defend and preserve linguistic and cultural studies as an essential part of the university’s commitment to humanities.”
Marcas Mac an Tuairneir, a Gaelic editor trained at Aberdeen, originally from York, said the Celtic studies at the university were essential to the survival of Gaelic language and culture in Aberdeen.
It was “the axis on which everything to do with Gaelic in the city spins”, he said. “Without the department, there would be no Celtic society which provides a haven for Gaelic-speaking students to get together outside the classroom.”
A petition on change.org calling for the cuts threat to be lifted has more than 10,000 signatures. On Wednesday the university’s senate, a representative body, voted overwhelmingly for the review to be halted to allow for alternatives to be investigated.
Opponents of the cuts now fear the university’s court, its governing body, will agree at an emergency meeting on Tuesday 15 December not to get involved. It is expected to devolve the decision to the steering group that has proposed the cuts.
A university spokesperson said: “These are difficult and uncertain times for universities as they deal with the impact of the sharp decline in the numbers of young people studying languages. The university remains committed to teaching languages but is exploring how this can be done sustainably.
“[We] are unfortunately not in a position to make a commitment to the continuation of our current provision given the long-term and accelerating reduction in enrolments for degrees in modern languages.”
