The decision is momentous: From the coming winter semester 2026/27, no further students will be admitted to the Sound Studies & Sonic Arts, Music Therapy and Leadership in Digital Innovation courses at the UdK in Berlin. The master’s program in Sound Studies & Sonic Arts has existed at the university since 2005. Around 65 students are currently studying, accompanied by a team of management, coordination, administration, professorships, technology and student assistants. Dozens of people, including internationally well-known names in the music scene, hold teaching positions.
The roots of the artistic exploration of sound also lie in Berlin in the 1970s. Back then, daring nerds started using instruments and what they thought were instruments, even against the instructions. The result was completely new approaches: the unheard and unheard at the interfaces of sound design, sound art, technology and philosophy. Often in a critical examination of social conditions.
In 2005, what had begun in subcultures in the previous decades was institutionalized with the UdK master’s program in Sound Studies at what is now the Central Institute for Continuing Education. Since then, the course has trained artists through mutual influence, many of whom made it into the big cultural centers and received important scholarships and awards. Since 2017, the course has been offered exclusively in English.
The planned deletion without replacement sparks protests far beyond the scene. A petition against the closure was signed almost 4,000 times within a few days. Numerous artists and high-reach social media accounts such as Berlin Club Memes shared the calls, and international media and media outside the scene also reported.
Irreparable loss
Those affected, who do not want to be named, tell the taz that “with this decision, the UdK is carelessly giving away knowledge and artistic expertise at a radiant location for sound art and experimental music.”
Program director Professor Georg Klein is even clearer: “An artistic and scientific tradition is being broken off and irretrievably lost. It is incomprehensible that it should no longer be possible to study sound art in all its diversity at one of the largest art universities in Europe.”
The management and Senate cite the 2021 amendment to the Berlin Higher Education Act as the reason for the abolition. The study programs at the ZIWT are not sufficiently integrated into the university’s structures and also have no overarching subject-related connection in terms of content, which is why continuation after the amendment to the BerlHG is impossible and there is no alternative to ceasing operations. In the future, courses of study will only be offered at the faculties.
taz sources from the area of the course, which is considered a continuing education course and therefore requires a fee, say: “Legal arguments increasingly serve as instruments to enforce structural simplifications and no longer to promote academic development.”
Strict austerity measures by the Berlin Senate
The continuation of the course seems to be failing not only for university law reasons, but also because of the strict austerity measures that the current Berlin Senate decreed in 2025 and which also hit the UdK hard. According to the university management, a lack of funds prevents the missing courses from being located in one of the eleven faculties and thus being legally secure and free of charge. In terms of content, the faculties of music or fine arts could be considered. It initially remained unclear how intensively this solution was examined internally.
Music Dean Eckart Hübner rules out this option at his faculty: “The Music Faculty must save ten percent of its positions. This also affects core areas of the faculty’s tasks and so it is completely impossible to integrate new areas if new funds cannot be made available for this at the same time.” And: “The Senate’s austerity requirements are so extensive that it will be impossible for the UdK Berlin to continue everything as before.”
On February 11, 2026, the UdK Academic Senate is scheduled to process the degree programs. However, important meetings of the ZIWT Institute Council, which has to formally revoke the examination regulations, yesterday, Wednesday, were canceled at short notice. The student representatives from Sound Studies & Sonic Arts then shared their point of view via the course’s Instagram account late on Tuesday evening: “Instead of taking our concerns into account, they are suppressing our movement and hoping to be able to implement the closures without open discussion.”
The university management, however, promises a legally compliant procedure and a discussion in the existing committee structure. At least the last word on the matter does not seem to have been spoken yet.