The discipline that ‘became’: developments in music technology in British higher education between 2007 and 2018.

In 2007 Carola Boehm published the introductory article within the first volume of the Journal
of Music, Technology & Education entitled ‘The discipline that never was: current
developments in music technology in higher education in Britain’. Boehm identified the
higher education offerings in music technology at that time. In the ten or so years that have
passed since those findings, we’ve witnessed both incredible growth in the HE sector and
significant shift in the flavour of programmes on offer. This shift has been seen primarily in
the growth of the creative practice-led title of ‘music production’, but not at the expense of
traditional ‘music technology’. Boehm’s paper also explored the wider range of subject
matters that could be considered within the then term ‘music technology’, whether by an
ever-expanding technological backdrop, or through interdisciplinarity. In this paper, we report
on the significant changes since then, with some analysis for the future whilst considering
the current political challenges for British Higher Education.