Singing for their supper

The image of the starving violin student practising in his freezing garret may be anecdotal, but making it through the training to become a professional classical musician is probably as gruelling financially as it's ever been - and there are fears that the introduction of top-up fees in 2006 may make things even tougher.

The image of the starving violin student practising in his freezing garret may be anecdotal, but making it through the training to become a professional classical musician is probably as gruelling financially as it's ever been - and there are fears that the introduction of top-up fees in 2006 may make things even tougher.

Undergraduate BMus (Hons) courses at conservatoires last four years, and students apply for loans to fund themselves in the same way as other undergraduates. But to make it to the top, virtually all music students need to take out further loans to pay for expensive postgraduate courses lasting from two to five years.

"Most music performance students will need to do two or three years' postgraduate study," says Sue Dalton, an education officer for the Musicians' Benevolent Fund, which last year gave out £300,000 in bursaries. "Singers usually study even longer. They might do two years on a postgraduate vocal course, two years doing an opera course, then perhaps a year or so at somewhere like the National Opera Studio. It's a struggle, especially as postgraduates have student loans around their necks."

The other factor that marks music out from other disciplines is that students need to buy their instruments, which are often more expensive than a new car. A violinist, for instance, will have to fork out a five-figure sum to buy a good violin, and a pianist can pay about £20,000.

"There are few professions where you need to spend £20,000 just to buy the tools of your trade," says Gavin Henderson, the principal of Trinity College of Music in London. "The challenges a young music student faces are formidable." Limited help is on hand from charities such as the Wolfson Foundation, the Leverhulme Trust, and the Ralph Vaughan Williams Trust, which help students to buy their instruments.

Compared with the US, where endowment funding is plentiful, or countries like Germany and Holland, where the state pays fees, Britain is a tough environment in which to make it as a musician, says Henderson. It's not all bleak, though: all conservatoires award scholarships to students who show outstanding talent, and many also offer bursaries to students from poor backgrounds.

The long-established London conservatoires, like the Royal College of Music and the Royal Academy, are particularly well endowed and can offer generous scholarships for as much as the full fees in some cases (an astronomic £13,500 a year in the case of overseas students). The Royal College, Britain's richest conservatoire, can afford to fund students on scholarships for all four years of their undergraduate course or both years of their postgraduate diploma or masters course, whereas most conservatoires can fund only a student's first year.

Another avenue is to apply to the Musicians' Benevolent Fund ( www.mbf.org.uk), which grants awards of between £750 and £5,000. Last year most of its 110 awards were to postgraduates. They're not all for classical music scholars: the awards included two jazz awards and even one for a bagpipe player to study at the Royal Scottish Academy.

When top-up fees are introduced in 2006, though, music students will find the going even tougher. Undergraduates will have to pay £3,000 a year for tuition (payable after graduation), compared with £1,150 at present, plus living costs on top. They will have to pay back their loans for both maintenance and tuition once they are earning more than £15,000. Some conservatoires, like Birmingham, say they have noticed a rush for entry this September by students wanting to avoid paying top-up fees next year.

"Top-up fees will undoubtedly scare off some students from poor backgrounds because they'll face an even greater burden of debt," says Neil Taylor, director of finance at the Royal Northern College of Music.

Conservatoires are preparing themselves accordingly to ensure that they don't lose talent. The extra income from top-up fees will be used to create bursaries for the most needy. In essence, money will be recycled from the rich to the poor. The Royal Northern says about 30 per cent of the extra income it receives will be recycled.

The Royal College of Music will, for the first time, introduce bursaries based on need, and has pledged to fill any shortfall between what a student receives in state grants (the maximum will be £2,700) and the new tuition fees (£3,000). It will also award travelcards to help students meet the costs of living in London.

Other conservatoires are still firming up their plans, and these have yet to be approved. At the Royal Northern, in cases where parents' income is less than £15,000, the College will pay £1,000 towards students' maintenance. This would be on top of the £2,700 students receive in state grants. Smaller awards would be made on a sliding scale to all students whose parents earn less than £40,000 a year.

Trinity College is proposing a similar scheme. All undergraduates who qualify for maintenance grants will receive a further supplement from the college of 25 per cent. Thus, a student in receipt of a grant of £2,700 will have this topped up by £675. The college will also introduce an instrument loan scheme.

Horace Trubridge, a spokesman for the Musicians' Union, says he believes that top-up fees will deter people from taking qualifications in music. "Instead, they'll be looking for ways of working and getting a diploma at the same time," he says. The Union is currently piloting a scheme to create a Musicians' Union Instrumental Teaching Diploma, which students can take while working full-time.