Is a 40-hour-week still feasible for performing arts students?

It's an interesting provocation, and my own experiences of the financial (and myriad other) hardships of HE students lends a lot of weight to this argument. I also suspect that the historical basis for the argument is not only incredibly sound, but strongly evident to anyone working in the performing arts (+ Humanities, Media, Design, visual arts etc etc), where we've been dealing with the attritional drip, drip, drip, of everything from the Gove reforms onwards, for the last decade. While recognising the call for bravery and innovation, I wonder how competitive an offer would be (for performance based courses) that didn't reflect industry working practices and the importance of skill development in the studio. It's easy to imagine a war of perception being waged in brochures and syllabi, with contact hours and terms like 'industry alignment' being weapons of choice. But it'll be interesting to see what RBC and other institutions come up with! I'm also cogent of exploring a reduction in studio hours feels like an acceptance/complacency from institutions that the bigger arguments (like radically more state support for students in a cost of living crisis and arts advocacy more generally) have been abandoned, or at least sidelined, with an acceptance that this government along with its many (admittedly far worse) predecessors, is not interested in dealing with inequality, preferring to preserve their place in facilitating it. Rage Rage, against the dying of the (stage) light