Which courses to cut?

[elseware]

OMFG WTF?The above article is pretty fucking painful reading. I know the Solent isn't exactly in the same league but this feels awkward, like watching your parents dance at a wedding. I can just see her getting bookings based on that degree. Maybe she could take an MSc in stripping

Comments

[nmg]

Hmmm. That degree course sounds as though it should properly be considered a specialisation within cultural/media studies (with a healthy dose of eng. lit.)

I don't think that it's necessarily a poor course, but I think that the student's expectations are a little unrealistic; I don't see that course as a springboard into comedy writing. In fact, judging from previous successful comedy scriptwriters, your best bet would seem to be a degree in English or History from Oxbridge and a bit of moonlighting in Footlights before coming out at the Fringe.

The point of a university, like any arm of the government, is to increase the wealth of the people. Fail fail fail.

Flat wrong. First, universities are not an 'arm of the government'. Publicly funded yes, but independent of government, and mostly operating under royal charter.

Second, it depends on what you mean by 'wealth'. If you're only considering a utilitarian view in which degrees are valued according to their ability a) to grant the recipient a higher salary and b) to increase GDP, then I'll have to disagree. Such a view ignores the contribution that the arts and the humanities make to the cultural wealth of both the individual and the nation.

You and I are in an applied discipline, but even here the direct contribution to GDP isn't as clear as it might seem. I also acknowledge that there's a lot that falls outside the traditional boundaries of our discipline but which impinges on what we do (one might consider psychology and its influences on everything from artificial intelligence to human factors). Unlike (say) the ex-Education Minister Charles Clarke, I see the value of degrees in medieval history, classics and even comedy.

[elseware]

If we're funded by taxes we're an arm of the government IMO. They pay us therefore we work for them, as leaders of the people who fund us. I agree I was over-reacting. First thing in the AM.

I believe that I defined quite clearly what I meant by wealth, please re-read.

[nmg]

What about academic freedom? Universities are still independent of government (despite the attempts of successive governments); they don't control what we teach (TQA is more about how we teach), and while they may control the purse strings, they have no direct control over what we research.

Okay, so I guess that 'positive experience' could cover some notions of cultural wealth. And yes, bit of a knee-jerk reaction from me, I'm afraid.