Wallace and Gromit lead new crop of industry-partnered degrees

Wallace and Gromit have been entertaining audiences for more than two-and-a-half decades now. Might they also hold the key to improving student employability?

They potentially have a part to play, with a collaboration between creators Aardman Animation and the Royal College of Art (RCA) joining a growing crop of courses being co-designed by industry organisations and higher education institutions.

The master’s in fine arts (MFA) in animation is a 20-month, five-term degree involving Aardman’s academy arm. The first year takes place in RCA studios, before a professional studio residency at the firm’s Bristol studios, under the mentorship of industry experts. When the first cohort joins in 2027-28, academic delivery, assessment and degree-awarding will remain the responsibility of the RCA.

Sam Moore, head of animation at the RCA and a Bafta-nominated film-maker herself, told Times Higher Education that the course was aimed at people looking to “make a change” in their artistic practice, or those who had worked in animation for a few years but really “want to turbocharge their portfolio, or be seen as a director, or make a significant piece of work that they can come out and use as their calling card”.

But she stressed that students should not feel pressure from the Aardman link-up to create “more Wallace and Gromits – they already exist, and that’s wonderful”.

“Even though we’re working with Aardman, students don’t have to do stop motion,” Moore explained. “Students should come to us with all different kinds of animation skill.”

Moore said the partnership was a good example of how a combination of university and professional insight could help to develop careers.

“I think those industry connections are really important,” she said, but added: “We’re not saying industry is the be-all and end-all; this is an academic programme…At the Royal College, students are creative individuals and artists who we hope will lead the industry. We want people to develop their creative voices.”

The collaboration is the latest to emerge from Aardman Academy’s university partnerships scheme, which offers enrolled institutions the chance to bring students to visit the company’s studios, enjoy online masterclasses, receive feedback on their portfolio of work, and more.

Existing partners include the Northern School of Art, the University of the West of England and the University of Texas at Dallas.

Mark Hewis, head of Aardman Academy and a former Aardman Animations director, said such collaborations were important in industries that were often “incredibly secretive”.

“Working in film, there are non-disclosure agreements all over the place,” he said. “There’s barriers that make it really hard for you to be able to [enter the industry].”

Hewis said the enterprise initially faced a “real challenge” in terms of how to support students and course leaders in a way that felt “meaningful”, particularly when universities often had tight budgets.

“We decided about six years ago that we would create essentially a partnership package that would allow us to offer a whole year of brilliant things that a university’s marketing team would find it easy to get behind, but [in which] the benefit to students and academics [would be] far greater,” he said.

Degrees informed by industry partners may feel particularly attractive to students at a time of high unemployment and debate over the value of attending university when it comes to graduate earnings and outcomes.

Meanwhile, under new prime minister Andy Burnham the government has made an effort to emphasise technical education as much as purely academic pathways.

Industry-informed degrees might be seen as one way of achieving that parity between practical and theoretical learning.

There are a range of examples across the country, although unlike the RCA example, they are often found in areas like engineering, healthcare and business.

The University of Leeds, for example, runs a biopharmaceutical development master’s, to mould its students into creating the “medicines of the future”. It was developed by, and is delivered in partnership with, Labcorp Drug Development.

Nottingham Trent University’s undergraduate degree in agriculture, meanwhile, was designed in consultation with the National Trust, one of the largest landowners in the UK. It offers students the opportunity to study on the university’s 200-hectare farm and rural estate in Brackenhurst.

And Birkbeck, University of London offers a range of courses within areas such as hospitality, delivered with Le Cordon Bleu London Culinary Arts Institute.

For Steven Jones, professor of higher education at the University of Manchester, any chance to connect industry and universities was “overall…a positive development”.

“Universities are obviously under a lot of pressure from the government, and it looks like Burnham in particular, to be more aware of vocational opportunities – so if a partnership like this falls into a university’s lap, then that’s a good thing,” he said.

But Jones said there were always reasons to be “cautious about things” like the question of “what happens if the private company withdraws”.

“There are risks that it could be seen, from the company’s point of view, as an opportunity for low-paid labour. So I think we’d need to think about protection for students,” he said.

georgia.luckhurst@timeshighereducation.com