Full-disclosure. I am writing this article having spent the past fifteen years teaching photography within a university and I hope to continue doing so. During that time I have gained a post graduate teaching qualification and a PHD but most importantly I have taught over 300 students the understanding of a medium that I have been engaged with professionally for over forty years. I have experienced its evolution from analogue to digital, from offline to online, from camera to smartphone. I’ve paid my dues to photography and had to evolve as it has done. This evolution and need for acceptance of change is I believe one of the reasons that so many photography courses have closed or are in danger of closing.

That and the economic reality of educational institutions today. Let’s deal with that first. It is no secret that UK universities are in serious financial difficulties. The arts live within that environment and are suffering badly. Courses are closing in art, music, modern languages, the humanities and photography. Lecturers are losing their jobs and schools and faculties are reducing in size and ambition. I’m not going to go into detail here as to why this is, but a short explanation is that it’s finance based. Spreadsheet decisions based on collected market data inform many decisions in our lives these days and academia is no different. So, don’t be surprised if over the coming years you see UK universities sell buildings, close and mutate into ‘super’ universities across county lines based on these ‘insights’.

The problem with these solutions to an inarguable problem is that data is about what has happened not what the future could hold and photography needs to be looking to the present and the future to survive. The reason for this is that those born since 2005 have experienced the photographic image, its use and capture in forms unlike those of us born in the last century. They are the future for photography. Therefore to teach them lecturers above thirty years of age must do so based on now and not how and what they were taught in the past. To make it hard to learn technically, theoretically and financially only builds barriers to engaging with the medium and the courses that need them to survive. Photographic capture and dissemination today is easy and that needs to be accepted. Career focus and potential is also essential for students looking to invest heavily in their education.

I have no emotional or academic attachment to what photography was or how it was taught. My degree is in Graphic Design. I never had a lecturer or lecture. There were no modules and only one grade given after three years. My education in photography is informal. Self-taught and self-learnt. I therefore have no emotional or academic attachment to the past of photographic education. This includes analogue, something I worked with as a professional photographer when there was no other choice but left behind when the digital option was available and affordable to me in 2006.

The issue for legacy photo courses is that they have spent years investing in studios, darkrooms and analogue equipment which they have to justify retaining and using to their budget controlling management. They are therefore compelled to continue teaching with them whether they are relevant to the present or future or not. I know many will disagree with me concerning this but these facilities are expensive to maintain and therefore add to course budgets. That cannot be argued with. This is not a problem when student numbers are high but today they are not across the board. Student numbers have been declining in the arts for years just as those choosing arts based qualifications before university has dropped. Low numbers means low revenue, reduced budgets, reduced staff and eventual closure. If a course looks expensive to run and lacking in employment relevance it quickly becomes a tall poppy ready to be cut down. Analogue or closure? I know which I would choose.

For it to survive teaching photography needs to be reconsidered and reborn. Photography does not have to be an expensive subject to study. It doesn’t need infinity curves, multiple studios, expensive lighting rigs, large rooms of printers and scanners, darkrooms, large format cameras and colour processing systems. Today it needs to be light on its feet, culturally relevant and aware, accepting of the role photography plays in our online lives, embracing social media, and the moving image. It needs to be exciting to those whose introduction to photography was the smartphone, Instagram and Tik Tok.

Now don’t get me wrong I’m not suggesting a rejection of the past but I am saying that we cannot be defined and constricted by it. Those involved in education have to understand this to be able to reframe the understanding of what studying photography means in 2025. In my eyes it is not to train people to be photographers. That may happen but it should not be the one and only outcome being considered. It is a time for students to grow, explore and identify potential career paths which photography may have a touch point with.

Photography today is a global visual language that informs everything we do in our lives. Teaching that language is far more important than training people to fulfill a role based on understandings that are no longer relevant, to explain this to those in positions to close courses requires understanding. Fighting to keep what was is a losing argument.

I’m not saying that everyone or indeed anyone currently closing courses will listen. There are no gurantees in life. My experience outside of academia has been filled with people who don’t listen and make bad short-sighted decisions. Management who caused magazines to close, and people to lose their jobs before they inevitably lost theirs. Walking away from the chaos they caused into new jobs leaving the debris behind for others to deal with.

However, not to speak up and try to influence such decisions is to me a dereliction of duty. No one wants photography courses to close who loves the medium. Photography has never been so important in our lives as it is today. It is omnipresent every hour of our day and night. This needs to be explained to those who have an outdated view of the medium. Photography needs to be studied, understood and made attractive to prospective students. Not just those who want to be photographers but to those who want to be involved in an exciting creative environment that informs their life but who see photography as being either irrelevant or too difficult to engage with.

Dr.Grant Scott
After fifteen years art directing photography books and magazines such as Elle and Tatler, Scott began to work as a photographer for a number of advertising and editorial clients in 2000. Alongside his photographic career Scott has art directed numerous advertising campaigns, worked as a creative director at Sotheby’s, art directed foto8 magazine, founded his own photographic gallery, edited Professional Photographer magazine and launched his own title for photographers and filmmakers Hungry Eye. He founded the United Nations of Photography in 2012, and is now a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, and a BBC Radio contributor. Scott is the author of Professional Photography: The New Global Landscape Explained (Routledge 2014), The Essential Student Guide to Professional Photography (Routledge 2015), New Ways of Seeing: The Democratic Language of Photography (Routledge 2019), and What Does Photography Mean To You? (Bluecoat Press 2020). His photography has been published in At Home With The Makers of Style (Thames & Hudson 2006) and Crash Happy: A Night at The Bangers (Cafe Royal Books 2012). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was premiered in 2018.

Scott’s book  Inside Vogue House: One building, seven magazines, sixty years of stories, Orphans Publishing, is on sale now wherever you buy your books.

©Grant Scott 2025