so, what IS a 'Mickey Mouse' degree?

[lemonysweet]

inspired by the thread about whether youd like your child to go to uni.

go on then, what degrees do you consider 'Mickey Mouse'

[personally i would never be so throwaway about something someone had invested so much time, effort and money into, but im interested in others opinions]

yes moondog, as I said it's an issue for another thread really but I do think programmes like CSI (Completely Shit and Irritating :o) have a lot to answer for - glorifying it and making it seem too easy. I dare say a lot of fields have that problem, with programmes like casualty etc

Fibilou - maybe he could transfer onto another similar course. Lots of courses give you the option of shifting onto something else after first year.

Getorf, my DH and I don't have degrees (I dropped out in my first year) and yet we have far higher salaries than any of my group of friends that did go. My DH earns more that my BF's husband who is Head of History at a senior school.

I don't feel that our lack of degrees has hindered us at all but I would love the opportunity to return to university to study law - sadly I only discovered my passion for criminal law later in life and we just can't afford for me to have the time off to do it :( I often feel that tertiary education is wasted on the young, it certainly was on me - all I did was drink and enjoy myself (and I did languages at Exeter so not what I would consider a mickey mouse degree)

FWIW I would consider a MMD to be something like Football Studies. A degree should be testing and rigorous academically.

The only person I know who's a forensic scientist is an MD, medical doctor. He then did a residency in pathology. In other words, he's a qualified pathologist. After this he did an intership with a coroner - these are also MDs in the US.

I tell a lie! My former physical anthropology lecturer, a PhD, also works part-time for the coroner's office in Travis County in a forensic capacity.

But again, a lot of hard science in the background there, and he's an academic as well.

BA Honours Disney Characters

God I'm hilarious.

I just don't get why there's such pressure on people to go to uni (sorry this is really more appropriate to the other thread) - it's basically saying 'if you're not academic enough to go to uni, you're shit' - why?! not everybody is academic, it's nothing to be ashamed of is it? what's the point in going and doing a useless degree just for the sake of having one, why not just accept that you'd be better off doing something vocational?

"Football Studies" ?!..... I despair....

interesting thread

I had no idea there were degree level courses in some of these subjects.

Maths, it might be in part due to the decline of vocational education in this country - fewer apprenticeships, for example.

People don't want to invest money in training any more, do they? It's assumed that it will all be taken care of by the higher ed. section. Hence more vocational degrees.

Any degree where the person leaves university unable to form a simple declarative sentence and mispells things on their typed CV, not even knowing how to use a spell-checker.

I do feel that knowing basic grammar and spelling is the least one should expect from a higher education?

Sadly, a lot of students are allowed to get away with bad syntax, appalling grammar and dire spelling as the pressure is to produce a lot of 2.1 and firsts.

When I interivew candiadates with degrees I expect articulate indiviuals, not "you know", "sort of" and "right" in each alternate sentence.

I am picky though, my staff have to write business cases so "just a good idea, innit?" doesn't quite cut it.

yes you're right there, it's a vicious cycle isn't it - the govt want half of teens to go to uni (ARGH!!!) and therefore place far less value on said apprenticeships, and so it goes on :(

There was an article in the paper about grad training scheme applicants being a bit ropey.

There was one for a Kimberly Clark grad training place - a blue chip company so imagine quite a good place to get a grad placement.

The applicant spelled Kimberly Clark wrong (Kimberley Clarke) and said on the applicatiob 'I don't know anything about your company but the website looks nice'.

Dumbass.

We used to get hospitality undergraduates for their industrial placements. They were dire - no idea how to do anything other than theorise and pontificate. I remember one very clearly, very opinionated and full of her own importance. She clearly thought she was going to be doing managerial tasks for her placement. She couldn't even silver serve and had never done anything practical in a hotel in her life. All of us on the management team had "come up through the ranks" and had years of practical experience which enabled us to make decisions at a moment's notice. We just laughed at their cockiness in the main

These are the sorts of areas which do not need a degree - I used to provide detailed financial reports yet the only training I had on this was input from the manager before me. There's no university course that can tell you what to do when you're duty manager and within 15 minutes you've got to deal with 2 members of waiting staff off sick, a busy service, no hot water in one wing and a phone call from Heathrow telling you you've got 50 1st class passengers arriving for a delayed flight requiring supper in 2 hours time. Only experience tells you that.

At 22 I was far more employable with 4 years experience than an undergraduate.

good point fibilou. another thing I don't understand is this graduate management recruitment thing that's quite fashionable. people with a degree in any old thing are favoured over those without a degree but bags of experience, and get thrown straight into a managerial role.

sensible.

There are plenty of vocational careers where a degree might be considered counterproductive - too much theorising and too little hands on experience, as Fibilou says.

Nursing may fall into this category as well - my MIL is a nurse and she has to deal with new nurses coming in from after their degree who can't do the basics. And in some cases, won't do the basics because they consider it beneath their degree status.

One of my lodgers was a semi-literate youth who had been on a course to do car maintenance - he was ok when it involved 4 days in the workshop and only 1 in college, but the following year it was going to be reversed and he couldn't stand the thought of that so dropped out with nothing.

Degrees and academic training aren't for everyone and I'm sure I'm not the only one who thinks the Govt should stop pushing teens into going to Uni at all costs, and increase funding in vocational and artisan courses/apprenticeships/traineeships.

SomeGuy, i would just like to clear something up, i HAVE a Mickey Mouse degree!

i just hate the term and was wondering other people's opinions on it!

tbh, i think doing a degree at the moment might just be a good way to ride out the Tories/recession...

v. interesting replies, thankyou people!

we need to have more advertised paid training jobs, a friends daughter has just done a year at an architecture firm, and has been paid while she gets the experience. that experience has got her into a v. good uni [thats not a russell group one either. methinks the quality of uni is down to individual teachers on the courses]
they are willing to have her back during summers and christmas [paid] and then join them when she is finished. this isnt a particularly well known firm either. why arent there more places like this, or do we just not hear about them? i've been googling stuff like this for my daughters, out of curiosity, and theres pretty much nothing, or they want you to do full time work without pay, which just wont be feasible for my two as i couldnt support them.

they're all doooomed.

people bitch about jobs like hairdressing, but bugger me at least its always going to be around and is generally a stable job...

Did Mickey Mouse have a degree?
If he did I imagine it would be in film or media studies or maybe travel and tourisn[Disneyland].He would earn a lot of money.I think maybe it is a degree which is solely for the individual and gives nothing back to the community.Soooo what price Philosophy then or Classics or Literature.
Mickey Mouse BA[laughs]M.Phil[entertainment]Phd [endurance].

I think any kind of degree in arty things. definitly a non subject.

Interestingly enough my force scrapped residential training at police training centre in favour of a university-based scheme about 4 years ago, I was in one of the last intakes at Ashford PTC. Over the last few years the quality of teaching has gradually eroded to the point where I had to explain the points of criminal damage to a girl who had just come off her course - which would never have happened when the training was in-house. We had to pass stringent exams and learn our law definitions by heart or you'd have been kicked out - there's none of that now. The university environment made the training relaxed and very informal, not what you need in a disciplined service; we weren't even allowed to call our tutors by their first names, it was "Staff Scrase". The teaching at the university was delivered by university staff, not police officers which was also a disadvantage as they had no idea of practical application of the law in a policing environment

Anway, the point of my ramble is that the university system has been judged an expensive flop and from next year our recruit training (when we ever get any) is coming back in-house

Funnily enough TW, the last line of your post about a one size fits all educational policy resounds with something I put on the "welfare state" thread - I am a passionate believer that it is the responsibility of schools to find what children are good at (because we are all good at something) and to develop that into a career, whether it be astrophysics or gardening

My dd's bf has a degree in physics, advanced maths, and environmental physics from a 'proper' university. Took him a year to get a job. dd has a 'mickey mouse' media studies degree from a not-so-good uni and walked into a job 2 weeks afgter graduating.

Academic snobbery is irrelevant. What is important is your employability, based on the opportunites, your skills and personality, and a little bit of your qualifications.

So much depends on the individual course too. My degree is in Journalism (with Russian as minor) from a "red-brick" university. It's the only old university to offer journalism and it is highly respected in the industry as it actually trains students to be journalists, as opposed to just learning about and journalism. There are also options for more academic studies within the degree, for example political communication, censorship etc. So you get the best of both worlds, an academic degree and practical experience. Some people may see it as an MM degree, but for me it was perfect. And (until made redundant!) I was a legal representative, it's amazing how transferable certain skills are!