The irrelevance of degree titles

Would you like a degree in Waste Management with Dance?  Sound like a strange combination?  Apparently not that strange.  The course is available at Northampton University.

The Telegraph has reported on how the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) wants to see no change to the way it allocates funds to universities and, therefore, would allow all sorts of bizarre degree courses to continue.

I say ‘bizarre’, but what’s missing from analysis of HEFCE’s stance and The Telegraph’s view is opinion from students taking these courses.

photo by scragz

Might Stomp explain a degree in Waste Management & Dance?

A degree in Third World Development with Pop Music (or Dance with Equine Studies, if you’d prefer) may be perfectly sensible to students taking on the work.  Or perhaps those students are being led down a false trail of hope.  Or they just want a degree and were happy to take whatever they could in current climate.

Until recently, Media Studies used to face the wrath of critics who were ready to dismiss it as a pointless “Mickey Mouse” degree.  However, that particular stigma has disappeared as the years have gone by.  There may still be difficulties securing employment for many graduates, but that’s the same for many apparently worthwhile degrees.  Employability isn’t guaranteed in any field.

As universities cover an ever growing number of bases it’s not so surprising to find joint degrees that cover Waste Management and Dance.  For instance, you may want to combine a vocational interest with an important hobby.  Or you may want to further your experience in ways that cannot be covered with two similar subjects.  I doubt there will be much subject crossover in lectures if you study both Waste Management and Dance.

Many camps are keen to see HE as a resource for churning out employable individuals with a vocational talent.  But that’s never been the overarching point of universities.  You would expect a certain level of development to assist in employability and vocational expertise, but it’s not the sole purpose of HE.

That said, many students take the university route because they see nothing better in their circumstances or because they think it’s the passport to future career success.  Neither may truly be the case, but with a combination of more traditional careers requiring a degree and a lack of proper careers guidance and information for young people, I’m not surprised the situation has arisen.

Ridiculing degrees that sound stupid doesn’t help or prove anything.  Taylor et al explain:

“Barry Matthews, chair of the Professional Association of Teachers, suggested that teenagers were being brainwashed into thinking that university was their only option. Matthews questioned the need for vocational degrees, asking whether bricklayers needed degrees or practical ability, whilst he was also scornful of new ‘Mickey Mouse’ degrees in surfing or soap operas (Matthews cited in Curtis, 28 July 2004, p. 8). It is clear that there are now many new degrees in the portfolios of universities. Degrees have in some ways replaced the old apprenticeships and the practice of in-house training. For example, studies in journalism and in nursing are now successful degrees. We suspect that there will be those who believe that universities should not teach such subjects and should stick to teaching more traditional disciplines. Such a position fails to take into account the changing nature of the job market and the changing interests of students.” [Source]

I don’t have an answer to conclude with here.  In many ways, I don’t see much to answer.  Any degree with little value to the learner should be scrapped, whatever the discipline.  I’m not just talking about employability skills.  For whatever reason, it could be an English or a Biology course that fails in providing value.  At the same time, a single university offering Criminology and Pop Music Production may give students an amazing insight that no other could.  Degree title is irrelevant.

Students and graduates need to be part of the discussion as to what courses matter.  Their voices need to be heard and they need to be told the truth about why their course exists.

Without proper grounding, it’s pointless to worry about funding based on course titles.  And while nobody takes my proposal for a joint degree in Mosh Pit Sciences and Handbag Psychology seriously, I’ll stick with that view…

Don’t Plagiarise it. Remix it!

Academics have been remixing since forever.

You cannot move forward without taking from what is already behind you.

Yet remixing is different from plagiarising.  Academics reference the work they’re using and explain how they reached the detail they’re presenting.

photo by Thomas Hawk

photo by Thomas Hawk

There is a common misconception amongst students that you shouldn’t reference too much, because it looks like you haven’t done any thinking yourself.  But the more you refer to, the broader your research has been. Your scope widens as you read more, leading to more citations.

A high number of references is a healthy sign.  Those references have to be relevant, mind!

As you bring all these works together, you are creating a brand new work.  Remix. Mashup. Collaborate. From all this comes your own unique work.  You rely on others to make your own mark.

Coursework is a continuation of other people’s work, full of quotations, and full of ideas.  Even a groundbreaking, brand new finding/viewpoint must interact with previous research.  And each interaction requires an explanation of where it came from.

Additionally, if you have an opinion and want to back it up, it’s acceptable to find similar arguments elsewhere.  I spoke to one student who said they kept having to change their conclusions because they were the same as someone else’s view.  But there’s no harm in holding a similar view.  It’s just as natural to agree with others as it is to disagree with them.  Agreements in academia are helpful, because it’s material to back up your arguments.  It would be more difficult to back something up if everyone else disagreed with you!

Look at enough journal articles and you’ll start to see exactly how much academics manage to reference throughout their writing.  They don’t leave references out through fear of looking unoriginal.  When they discuss what has gone before and refer to previous findings, they are still creating a brand new work.

Your essays aren’t always unique research projects or a demonstration of new findings.  You may simply be discussing the merits of a statement or exploring a particular concept.  In doing so, your job is to cover as much ground as possible through primary resources and secondary material.  Should you find opinions that go against what you want to argue, bring that up too.  Explain why you don’t agree and back up with even more references on top of your own findings.

Next time you see an academic paper where the bibliography takes up the same number of pages as the article itself, hopefully you’ll understand why this happens!

It’s bad to plagiarise.  It’s great to remix!

What’s so potty about a Harry Potter course?

Durham University are about to start a module on Harry Potter.  Students on an Education Studies degree will get the chance to study Harry Potter in a social, cultural and education context, as well as consider the relevance of Harry Potter to education and how it impacts upon 21st Century education.

photo by bibicall

photo by bibicall

The course will not just look at the books, but explore the entire Harry Potter phenomenon.

Unfortunately, as soon as something popular or recent becomes an area of study, sensationalist headlines aren’t far behind.

For instance, the Daily Star ran the headline, “A HARRY POTTER DEGREE“.

A module isn’t a degree.  But some people will now think lazy students are going to spend three years doing nothing but reading J. K. Rowling’s books and perhaps writing the odd essay about what they’ve read.  If they can be bothered.  Bloody students…

The worldwide success and impact of Harry Potter gives it credibility to study further in an academic sense.  Serious attention will be given to the way Rowling’s books have changed the world and made a mark.  It would be sensible to study the texts, examine the historical perspectives, research the current and future impact, understand the way in which Harry Potter has changed the face of publishing and literature (if at all), and a whole host of other things.

Just look at Durham’s official module description for “Harry Potter and the Age of Illusion” and you’ll see an educational context given to the area of study.

It is entirely sensible for Education Studies students to be offered a module examining the influence of Harry Potter on education. Rowling’s novels are books for children that have sold millions of copies worldwide and gone way beyond the books themselves…if this isn’t a subject worth studying further, what is?

This isn’t the first time Potter has been frowned upon.  In 2008, one exam board included “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” on their syllabus.  As well as accusations of ‘dumbing down’, it was argued that recent works should not be included as they hadn’t stood the test of time.

Even if I believed this mattered, I would still argue that ‘standing the test of time’ doesn’t have much meaning.  There is no ruling to argue what should and shouldn’t stand the test of time.  The fact a book is placed on a syllabus means that it could remain there for many years.  In a decade, will Harry Potter have acceptably stood the test of time simply because it had spent a few years on a syllabus?  Forget the popularity and world-changing events surrounding the Potter brand, it’s still on an exam so it’s stood the test of time…

Back to the Daily Star article.  They print a comment from Nick Seaton, Chairman of the Campaign for Real Education.  Seaton is quoted as saying “It does not merit a course at one of the country’s top universities”.

What makes this module less worthy for study than another module? There are plenty of modules that look at literature from recent decades and they don’t even explore the impact on education and culture in the way this Harry Potter module will.  Does that mean all modern and postmodern literature modules should be scrapped?

Or perhaps the problem is because Harry Potter is not a science subject.

Science is, of course, on the cutting edge.  It regularly explores the ‘yet to be’.  Funnily, I don’t hear anyone complaining that the work is pointless because it hasn’t stood the test of time.

Okay, facetiousness to one side, let’s say we do look at STEM subjects (Science, Technology, Engineering, Maths) as the important areas for academic study.  The government certainly do.  Should popular culture or emerging literary concepts be dismissed as irrelevant areas of study?

For instance, a decade ago, complaints were raised when Staffordshire University offered a course on ‘David Beckham Studies’.  What is the point of awarding a degree in Beckhamology?

But there was no David Beckham degree.  In this instance, a ‘Football Culture’ module covering the history of football included a focus on David Beckham’s impact in recent years.  The degree itself was Culture, Media and Sport.  Put in context, I find no problem with this idea whatsoever.

However, misinformation and sensationalism results in ridicule, making a mockery of higher education.  No wonder the public are quick to dismiss students as lazy and complain that there are simply too many graduates entering the workforce based on no proper work at all.

But these are false trails.  Any proper argument about graduate numbers, dumbing down, and so on, are left to one side as soon as conversation turns to ‘Mickey Mouse’ degrees and pointless areas of study.

In 2008, The Times talked of academic speeches covering the study of David Beckham.  Among them was Momin Rahman’s “Beckham: How ‘Queer’ serves ‘Heterotopia’ in the dialectics of celebrity”.

So what was Rahman actually talking about?  He asks, “What purpose does masculinity serve in contemporary society?  What does it mean to be a man?  Beckham has become a symbol of this whole issue.”

Rahman was looking at culture.  David Beckham was a valid route in.  The study of Beckham has gone beyond Beckham and asks some searching questions.

There are no easy answers to those questions.  Unsurprisingly, this is where academia comes in.

Academics have long explored topics that are foreign to many.  Shouldn’t this be a good thing?  If the work all made perfect sense and was obvious to all, it wouldn’t be research.  No new ground is covered when there’s nothing left to discover.

Why can we not use Harry Potter and David Beckham to find that new ground?  As soon as a higher level of study is brought to a topic with great public awareness and engagement, it’s like the world can’t make sense any more.  Is it really so difficult for a subject to be popular AND academic?

Press offices at universities must find the process of announcing new modules quite daunting.  On one hand, your uni is introducing something:

  • brand new;
  • exciting;
  • popular;
  • yet to be covered elsewhere.

On the other hand, the subject could be seen as:

  • a publicity gimmick;
  • a shameless way to encourage higher student sign-up;
  • an exercise in dumbing down;
  • a subject with no true academic relevance.

The study of something that has made a significant difference to many people must be a good thing.  The Harry Potter set is worthwhile of study because it is not simply a series of books.  David Beckham is worthwhile of study because he is not simply a footballer.

I don’t follow football, neither do I care what impact David Beckham has had on wider culture.  But I do know his impact has been massive and I do know that enough people care.  That, in my view, is more than enough to allow a focus on Beckham within a module on Football Culture, within a course on Culture, Media and Sport.

I would question a whole degree on David Beckham or Harry Potter in the same way I would question a whole degree on Jane Austen novels or atomic structure and bonding.  To get that in-depth on an isolated area is postgraduate territory and beyond.

But nobody is offering a degree on Harry Potter books.  Or Jane Austen novels.  Sensationalist headlines and entertaining news features don’t do higher education any favours when the detail isn’t accurately portrayed or explained.

Why the learning experience is greater than end results

A friend of mine struggled with tests as a child.  Any time an assessment was coming up, his mind would go blank and he’d panic.  The pressure of passing weighed down on him to such an extent that no manner of revision or study took him any further.

original photo by sashamd

original photo by sashamd

A couple of days before another test, the worry became too much and he asked his Dad for help.  His Dad, being a schoolteacher (and his Dad!), was a pretty good person to talk to.

Dad said, “You don’t need to worry about tests if you always try your best.  There’s more to life than getting full marks.”

The father went on to say that an interest in learning is far more important than focusing on a test result.  If you can honestly tell yourself that you worked with a view toward learning and discovery, the results should follow.  Get 0% or 100%, the mark doesn’t matter if you work hard in the process.  The results will come naturally.

My friend continued his preparation for the test.  This time, the learning was more fun.  He felt less stress and more connection with the learning materials.

On the day of the next test, he turned up at school with a totally different perspective.  There was a sense of peace. Terror didn’t pin him down.  Despite feeling nervous, he was confident.

And (surprise, surprise) he passed without difficulty and with high marks.  This success came about from one small change of focus.  Instead of concentrating on the end result, the focus was on the learning experience as a whole.

My friend has taken his Dad’s advice with him ever since and loved his time at university, while getting solid grades along the way.  He teaches other children now and I hope he’s able to pass on what he discovered to his pupils.

Unfortunately, schools are under so much pressure that many teachers are used to talking at their pupils rather than engaging in active conversation.  This doesn’t allow students to “perform at their optimum”.  At a time when pupils should be encouraged the way my friend was, they’re in real danger of being let down.

An Institute of Education (IoE) study on learning recently found that the advice my friend was given is effective in helping students achieve much better grades than those who are focused on results:

“In one study, some teachers were told to help pupils learn while others were told to concentrate on ensuring that their pupils performed well. The students under pressure to perform well obtained lower grades than those who were encouraged to learn.

“Another study showed that when teachers focused on their students’ learning, the students became more analytical than when the teachers concentrated on their pupils’ exam results.

“A further study, of 4,203 students, showed classroom behaviour improved when teachers focused on learning rather than grades.”
[Guardian]

At university, you are far more responsible for your own learning.  Luckily, that means you don’t have quite the same pressures with teachers focusing on your grades in the same way.  However, you need to make decisions over what you’re going to focus on.

So what will it be?  Focus on the result, or focus on the learning?  A focus on the learning allows the end result to develop favourably, whereas a focus on the result clouds the process.

Chris Watkins, the author of the IoE report says, “passing tests is not the goal of education, but a by-product of effective learning”.

Perhaps it’s time to give learning a fresh approach.  Involve yourself in the research.  Get interested in the material on offer and actively seek out more information.

Learning is key.  The focus on a First or 2:1 shouldn’t be necessary when you’re in it for the learning.